A pandemic is upon us, and we’ve entered a new epoch of six feet on center spacing. Measuring our interpersonal distance is nothing new. In 1963, cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall attempted to understand the experience of distance through his theory of proxemics, the “study of man’s perception and use of space.” As an ex-Foreign Service officer, he believed there was no singular experience of space and that “what crowds one people does not necessarily crowd another.” Therefore, there can be no universal index of social distances. He found that we all inhabit our own subjective worlds, which are shaped by how we interpret space and distance through cultural, visual, auditory, and olfactory inputs.
Hall developed metrics related to human comfort for middle-class Americans in relation to other people: intimate distance at one foot or less, personal at one-to-four feet, social-consultive at four-to-seven feet, and public distance at ten feet or more. With today’s six-foot social distancing requirement, the social-consultive distance is compulsory. A range meant for …