What are places?
Pencils are not places at all, while houses certainly are. The size of the object correlates somewhat with its placeness, but function is more important: a cardboard box is not really a place until a cat tries to sit in it.
We don't normally consider human beings to be places unless we're on the magic school bus or are using a spacial metaphor like Pixar's Inside Out.
Can software be a place?
Software often uses spacial metaphors. On the desktop, the best known examples are window and file managers. On the web, we have the aptly named sites (as distinct from pages, which are more similar to documents).
Most video games, from Pac Man to Half Life, are places. As virtual and augmented reality becomes mainstream, spacial metaphors from videogames are likely to find their way into the larger world of software. Our brains are good at navigating (and remembering) 3D spaces, so we will easily acclimate to virtual libraries (either in VR space or superimposed on real shelves), conference rooms (the Oculus version of Facebook Workplace), shopping malls, and hangout spots.
Places inhabited by Persons
If you live in a city, most places that you visit are not dumb chunks of concrete but must be staffed by intelligent persons. Some examples of places in this category:
Banks, stores, houses
Genius Loci and haunted houses
Software
Software
[ clippy, siri, candy crush, okcupid ]
Places that are Persons
In science fiction, intelligent places are described as artificial intelligences whose bodies are physical places like cars, spaceships, or buildings (Aperture Science, KITT, HAL). In the horror genre, they appear as haunted houses. They frequently appear in folktales and fairytales, as in the Slavic story of Baba Yaga.
Smart buildings
[ Aperture Labs, smart houses, Baba Yaga's Hut ]
Smart ships and vehicles
[ Knightrider, etc. ]
Personified places in religion and mythology
[ River Ganges, the Panentheistic God, Navajo Hogans ]Navajo Hogans
The Navajo Hogan is a residential place that is treated as a person. Hogans are personified in everyday speech, and are treated as living beings that need to be fed, cared for, spoken to, and shielded from loneliness.
The Hogan demonstrates that it's possible to relate to a place as a person even without the digital magic of interactivity.
Physical and digital communities
Places with strong communities, whether digital or real, can also be perceived as persons. For example, nations are often personified both by members of the nation and outsiders with whom it interacts.
Pros and cons of the two types of intelligent places
Advantages of places inhabited by persons:
[ agent (e.g. siri) can accompany user between places ]
Advantages of places that are places:
From The Navajo House Blessing Ceremony by Michelle L. Biehl:
The hogan is most often treated like a living object by its inhabitants. It needs to be taken care of and loved to sustain the harmony of the Navajo home life. "Hogans are personified in ordinary conversations - they are alive; they need to be fed, cared for, spoken to, and shielded from loneliness" (Frisbie 1980: 166). The ceremony then, not only serves the needs of its inhabitants, but it serves the needs of the hogan. The ritual aims to "feed the house, show proper treatment and respect to it, prevent timber breakage, and remove the hogan's loneliness" (176). The hogan's loneliness, before the ceremony is performed, is a dangerous thing; it can attract evil spirits.
Overview
| Person | Place | Place inhabited by Person | Sentient Person-Place | |
| Characteristics | Has real or imagined personality and agency | Can accomodate human presence, but no personality or agency of its own | A place whose essence, when interacting with it, involves one or more persons | A place that posesses its own real or imagined personality and agency |
| Intelligence/Memory | Interpersonal, emotional, mirror-neurons | Spacial | Spacial + interpersonal, emotional, mirror-neurons (applied to agents) | Spacial + interpersonal, emotional, mirror-neurons (applied to place?) |
| In everyday life | Human, pet, doll, hivemind, culture, egregore, corporation | Park, storage locker | Bank, store, house | Country, community |
| In religion | Angel, avatar, spirit, personified god, Tsukumogami | Place of worship, holy site | Holy of Holies, Shinto shrine | Panentheistic God, Navajo Hogan, Ganges River |
| In fiction | Creature, spirit, enchanted item | Fictional places, fictional universes | Haunted house, Genius Loci | Sentient ship, vehicle, house, or planet. Baba Yaga's hut |
| In software | Conversational apps (QZ), Google Glass, Amazon Echo, Bonzi Buddy | Website, internet, window manager, file manager, virtual reality, most games | MS Word + Clippy, iPhone + Siri, Candy Crush, okcupid | Aperture Labs (Portal), Pinterest, social networks with hiveminds (4chan, reddit) |
| Problems | Uncanny valley. Missing opportunity to take advantage of spacial memory & intelligence. Nothing to fall back on if agent's ability or intelligence insufficient for a task. | Impersonal. Learning new tools can be difficult. | Uncanny valley. Nothing to fall back on if agent's ability or intelligence insufficient for a task. | Personhood is bound to a specific piece of software or device, can't accompany user between different devices. |
Hiveminds, cultures, and egregores describe groups of people that behave (or are seen as) as a single organism.
Corporations are machines that are treated as a persons in some legal contexts. We also mentally model corporations as persons to some extent, viewing them as having personality, and forming relationships with them. Corporations have marketing departments to maintain their brand image.
Personhood-Placeness as a graph
Any entity can be placed on a Place/Person graph.
The vertical axis represents the degree to which the entity can be called a person, and the horizontal axis represents the degree to which it can be called a place.
At the very bottom you can find most objects (until you stub your toe on them) and most software (until it crashes).