power week 4

LAURENS STUDIO 17 13/05

LOTTE VAN HULST

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 Otherhere 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 higherstatus in human freedom and rights in this situation, living physically abovethe 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 carefully designed to oppress.

This expression of power is systemically designed in the city of Hebron where Palestinians are restricted in their daily life with fences, nets, barbed

Palestinian women walking along Hebron market with nets above them littered by Israelis (Source: Boness, 2019).

wire, guards or checkpoints everywhere. The net, installed by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), does not symbolise protection, it symbolises oppression.

Vanderbilt University (2003) defines oppression as “the combination of prejudice and institutional power which creates a system that benefits one group whilst discriminating the other .

This example may seem farfetched from the type of design students are educated for at the faculty of Industrial Design. Yet, this example shows it is important to take into account the composition of the interaction you are designing for. Physical feelings of hierarchy can be directly influenced in design.

The same goes for when designing for agency. In terms of the future of design, we must appopriate technology that gives people agency and allows to associate with community.

Another thing to consider is that parts of a design can symbolise different things in different cultures or contexts. Most of all, this shows the power of desired identities in attributing government and oppressing other people. In following chapters I will elaborate further on this concept of identity.