Malcolm had a project consultation with us yesterday. I showed him the scenarios I’ve been working on, which are written from the perspective of an artificially intelligent lighting fixture in a distributed network. He enjoyed it, and pointed out that one of the reasons the anthropomorphism works is that we know lighting fixtures aren’t sentient. When an automatic teller machine says, “Hold on, I’m processing that,” it’s frustrating in part because the use of the first person pronoun is confusing. The ATM takes the place of a human being — hence it’s name. Is it trying to act like a person? Is it letting me know that a real person is inside the bank processing my request? The “I” is confusing. But with a lighting fixture, it’s clear that the light fixture is not a person. So the use of the first person pronoun automatically places us in a newly imagined space.