25 October 2008

Panopticon without Walls

The CCTV camera seems now to have absorbed and fulfilled the latest incarnation of this same tool of power in relation to architecture. The essence of which, however, rests on a similar collateral assumption: that people are perhaps more prone to being governed by the limits of power they fail to test than by those they successfully do, and are mostly made powerless by the disservice of their own imaginations, or lack thereof; a failure of autonomy.

An awesome article by Bryan Finoki on Subtopia. It asks many questions before morphing seamlessly into fiction, most darkly asking us in the end, do we need to be watched if we've been convinced to watch ourselves?

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