The creation of space and place is one of the central concerns for architects and urban designers, as the original paper states. Harrison and Dourish define these concepts for specifically to understand existing computational systems such as collaborative virtual realities and media spaces in the framing of place. Dourish’s follow-up paper examines more broadly on the meaning of space and its social basis.
Although the original paper proposes a simplified model of space and place, and omits the social factors for creating space, it provides a first-cut approximation in understanding computational systems. A simplified model has been adopted in almost all areas of science, gravity included (that is, we think gravity is a constant value on Earth, but it is an approximated value based on an ideal location), and it seems reasonable to make simplifications to understand space and place and apply it. The reactions that Dourish writes in the second paper is to let others know that it is a simplified model and that there is more complexity to the space and place relationship, but complexity makes it less operational for designing our own computational systems.
From the original paper, we can consider space to be the built form and the place to be the social interactions that are associated with a place. We can infer that place is created from a person’s adaption of the space to fit his or her needs. We can generalize this simplified model as the designed interaction (the space) and the adapted interaction (the place). Designers can propose what a user should do and accomplish, but users are adept at bending the designer’s model to make a system useful for their particular needs. For example, the Windows file system encourages users to put their files in Music, Documents, and Videos, but most users do not follow the prescribed organization and create their own.
A take away point from the second paper is that there is no causal relationship between space and place but an intertwined coupling of the two. In applying this idea to a computational system, it means that a designer can build a system in a particular way (the space), people will learn to use the system in a particular way (the place), which in turn will influence how the designer builds systems. As Dourish points out, space is also a social artifact.
Something that also occurred to me when reading these papers is that new technologies such as GPS, Wi-Fi, cellular communication, and social networking websites are changing the meaning of space and place. For example, staying in one’s room with only telephone meant that only one-on-one relationships could be established (via telephone call); now social networking websites enable that single space to be associated with a large number of social contacts. Dourish’s discussion on how people use the black zones in physical-digital games is adding a new dimension to the physical form of space, which has not been encountered ever before.
