This is a perfectly normal elevator ride.
This elevator ride is incredibly uncomfortable.
What if you could measure these awkward moments?
What if you could transcribe them like a conversation?
In the 1960s, an anthropologist did just that.
Edward Twitchell Hall was known for conceptualizing the personal space bubble, and he also created
a whole system of notation to record how people navigate shared space.
Hall had been around the world and taught thousands of foreign service personnel how
to communicate in different cultures.
He believed culture and communication were inseparable, and that communication was as
present in silence as in speech.
He once wrote, "Man has developed his territoriality to an almost unbelievable extent.
Yet we treat space somewhat as we treat sex.
It is there but we don't talk about it."
Hall called his study "proxemics," and it dissected personal interaction with eight
key modes of analysis that each had their own code for recording.
1) Posture and sex These drawings used simple lines to show if
it was a man or a woman, and if they were standing, sitting, or lying down.
Every symbol got a number, too, so each position could be clear in an instant.
2) How people interacted Sociofugal relationships preserved an individual's
privacy.
Sociopetal ones encouraged interaction.
Drawn as if from above, he could show if people were facing each other or not.
Here's a couple side to side; here's one back to back.
And they could measure the effects of space on interaction.
3 and 4) Touch and space He built a grid to describe every touch.
00 was closest with a caress; 66 meant no contact at all.
And in between was the nuance of human interaction.
22 might be a hug; 33: a high five.
5) A visual code Even eye contact could be quantified.
From the center of one retina to the center of another, it could be dazzlingly direct,
or it could be the peripheral vision that dodged real connection.
6) Body heat Body heat could be recorded too as another
way of measuring connection.
Hall quoted one subject who said she could feel her dance partner's stomach heat up.
7) Smell He even monitored smell and breath, giving
it its own code.
DBO means smell as "differentiated body odor."
A wafting smell could be as loud as a word.
"This is the section about smell, isn't it.
Sh--" 8) Loudness
Now, if somebody said: "Jeremy, I got you the documents."
it could be coded on a scale to measure the nuance.
"Jeremy, I got you the documents.
[louder]" Now observers could describe interactions
like a meeting without needing to use words.
Instead, they could show a man sitting in a group, touching no one, with indirect eye
contact, no heat or smell, and a soft voice.
And together, all of these precise measurements helped discover the personal space bubble
we all know.
Hall refined it in other papers and books, but his personal space bubble is the one we
know well, as he defined it in his book, "The Hidden Dimension."
Surrounding a person, he found a 1 foot bubble split in two for intimate space, a bubble
of personal space followed out to 4 feet; beyond that was the social space of 4-10 feet
and public space beyond that.
It became how we think of space, just because one person bothered to observe it.
Today, we still use proxemics to understand space and people.
It's guided us not as a rulebook, but as a theory.
For everyone from theater directors, to intercultural communicators, to video game designers.
"He's nice, bit of a close talker."
"A what?"
"So how long you folks in town?"
[Laughter] It won't make the elevator ride more comfortable.
But now at least you know how to describe it.
So Hall had a lot of different inspirations for proxemics, but I wanted to talk about
one that was kind of unexpected: an ornithologist.
He was inspired by H.E.
Howard who wrote about territory in bird life.