The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

I Am a Videocam
THE MIRROR
The videocam is a mirror. Grainy surveillance images of ourselves flicker on
the subway platform, in the window of electronic goods stores, sometimes
on taxi dashboards. Electronic narcissism: we are indeed all famous now, but
not just for fifteen minutes. (Vanity can kill. Some of the Communards of
1871, who posed to be photographed on the barricades, were later identified
by their images and shot. 16 Encouraged, the French government started
using photography for police purposes soon after. 17 )
The infant rejoices at its reflected image, which releases it from the
subjective prison of its retina and places it in the social and symbolic world:
I am seen, therefore I am. 18 So mirrors make me whole. But they also disunite
me: reflections create doubles. I am thereafter split between a self seen
from within and a self seen from without. I spy on myself.
In 1993 a poll by the U.S. MacWorld magazine found 22 percent of
“business leaders” admitting to searching their employees’ voice mail, email,
and computer files. 19 Software applications with names like “Peak &
Spy” [sic], “Supervision,” and even “Surveillance” are available—to monitor
continually, for instance, the average number of copies an employee distributes
of each e-mail: too many indicates a hostile atmosphere or disaffection,
so management is alerted. 20
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