power week 4
13/05
LOTTE VAN HULST
LAURENS STUDIO 17
The documentary titled ‘Panopticon’ by Dutch film director Peter Vlemmix focuses primarily on privacy violation and the power that big corporations and the government hold over the people in its society. Morozov (2014) discusses the highly instructive influence of the Internet of Things (IoT). Here it is more about the social pressure exerted by designs, which is often overlooked by solutionist desires. Where Morozov talks about social pressure, the documentary touches upon the problem of the power of companies that is stifled by the harvesting of data as a result of privacy violations. An interesting take from the text is the gamification of behavioural changes for the purpose of efficiency. If you are continually stimulated externally, would one not lose intrinsic motivation? Will we become dependent on external stimulants? Or is this already the case? This “neo”Taylorism reflects the endless desire for increasing efficiency but is at the expense of our own agency and creativity (Morotzov, 2014). Our skills are being designed away until they are redundant. The entire system is concentrated on fast, smooth economic flow whilst reducing anything else to repetitive work or no work at all. This results in a shift of the remaining power to the other end of the structure; the employer. Or, as depicted in the documentary, to the big corporates and governments. Expressing power for the infliction of oppression Can design be devious? Another explicit expression of power is shown in the image on the right. This is a net above Hebron market to ‘protect’ Palestinians from being littered on by Israeli settlers. A brutal expression of at the expense of another people by the Israeli settlers. The Other here being the Palestinian people. They find themselves physically closer to the ground than their occupiers. Although the Palestinians are ‘protected’ by the nets, the net or fence, underlines the demeaning subordination as is provoked by the occupiers. They have a higher status in human freedom and rights in this situation, living physically above the Palestinians. The fence on top might feel like a precautious measure, and in a sense it is because you could say the fencing is placed in order to protect the people below. However, the act of throwing one’s rubbish from above is in itself an act of diminishment. It instigates a feeling and position of supremacy. One must not be mistaken that this desired effect is in fact Palestinian women walking along Hebron market with nets above them littered by Israelis (Source: carefully designed to oppress. Boness, 2019).
This expression of power is systemically designed in the city of Hebron where Palestinians are restricted in their daily life with fences, nets, barbed
