Digital Proxemics: How Technology Shapes the Ways We Move (Digital Formations Book 110)

personal distance is roughly any space in arm’s reach. This area, 1.5 to 4 feet from the body, is generally reserved for conversations and interactions with close family members and friends.

First, the mutual impacts of space on us and us on space. The physical space we inhabit and our use of it cannot easily be separated. We understand ← 12 | 13 →spaces by being in them and experiencing them.

the benefits of this design philosophy: The environment remains malleable based on the whims of actors; the environment accepts multiple viewpoints without restriction; and the actors control their own behaviors. But the difficulty with this viewpoint is the extreme passivity it requires of the environment.

determinism. The viewpoint of architectural determinism suggests that the built environment is directly linked to the behavior that occurs in it. The choices we have in a built space—where to sit, how to move, how to interact with co-present others—are dictated by the physical structure.

When thinking about territory, Hall categorized space into three genres of design: fixed feature space, semi-fixed feature space, and informal (or dynamic) feature space. Fixed feature space is typically characterized by immovable design. Semi-fixed feature space offers furnishings and boundaries that can be moved with varying degrees of effort. In

nonverbal forms of communication

a theory of digital proxemics in which technology allows spaces and users through four actions, giving each the ability to capture, inform, alter, and control the other.

the difficulty with this viewpoint is the extreme passivity it requires of actors in the environment.

When Edward Hall coined the term proxemics in The Hidden Dimension (1966), he used it to mean “social and personal space and man’s perception of it.”5 The role of space in our everyday lives is part of our culture. Our learned behaviors, he argues, are as foundational to our use of space as they are to other forms of verbal and nonverbal communicat