On Paraspatiality…
I have a book called behind-screens. It’s exactly what it says: blueprints of the sets of spaces of famous TV shows: the apartments from “Friends,” Cafe Nervosa from “Frasier,” the house from “The Waltons,” etc.
(I’ve attached some pics. It’s a really entertaining book.)
I’ve always been struck by how we mentally relate to these spaces. I did a couple LEGO sets of TV shows, and I was fascinated by how much I felt familiar with the physical spaces.
This makes me want to invent a word: “para-spatiality.” This is the natural tendency to project ourselves into an imaginary space, like a space of information.
I extrapolated this from “para-social.” That’s a new-ish word for an imagined relationship with a famous person. These days, we can peer into the lives of famous people like never before, so there’s a word to describe a weird relationship that forms over time.
To me, “para-spatial” is the imagined (?) relationship people have with domains or spaces of information.
Some of this is basic information architecture. I think we constantly see or sense ourselves moving through information. We think about it in spatial terms – it exists somewhere in relation to something else. We navigate “through” information to find what we want. We imagine ourselves in relationship to it.
(I wrote something very (ridiculously?) theoretical about this once: The Tortured Metaphor of Spatial Content Relativity)
I’ve gone to work for Staffbase recently, so this has taken on more importance for me. Intranets and employee portals are domains of information that people become very familiar with: you visit an intranet many times a day to find what you need, so you become… intimate (?) with it.
(I mean, just consider the word “visit” in the prior paragraph. You “visit” a web site? Think about what the word “visit” actually means, and how easily the concept of “visiting a website” rolls around in your head…)
So, I’m suddenly very interested in how humans think about the information spaces they need and use often. How do we consider them in relationship to ourselves? Do we imagine them para-spatially – as if we’re moving around in them?
I remember the movie “Disclosure” from 1994. In it, Michael Douglas uses some early form of VR to physically transport himself into an information space. A key scene is when an avatar of Demi Moore appears and starts “deleting” files. There’s a weird terror there – as if these people were physically in proximity to each other.
(It’s here if you want to watch it.)
This is where my head is at right now – how do we relate to information spaces over time? And how does this imagined, para-spatial relationship affect how we use, retain, find, and… own (?) the information in them?
Stay tuned. I promise to annoy you more about this topic.