Surveillance State Montage by Jason Minter
The City Without Privacy by Jason Minter
City without Privacy
The city is without fences, blinds, passwords, dark corridors, and hidden places. Buildings are erected in crystalline organizations, allowing for vertical, horizontal, or even diagonal connections between themselves as well as other structures. The aim of which is to enable connectivity among citizens wishing to interact. Walls are clad in glazed panels; each pane is enclosed in a structural frame which is able to reconfigure itself in several positions in order to accommodate real time changes to the built environment. Spaces seamlessly transition from states of enclosure to states of exposure. There is little need for doorways, except to protect citizens from nature’s elements, however all doors remain unlocked.
Public squares house much of the city’s activity. Within which citizens can be found thinking together, dressing fashionably, making love, eating various cuisines, doing anything imaginable, and watching other citizens. Each major square acts as a node from which streets radiate. As more activity takes place in a given square, it increases in size. Simultaneously the roads radiating from the square widen allowing for more traffic. In this way, each street intersection has potential to become a public square, if citizens’ activates begin to manifest in this place. Conversely, when the public square loses popularity its size and arteries shrivel.
The city’s inhabitants are joined at birth with an SD31. SD31s have two functions; the first is to follow their inhabitant, recording their every action from a third person perspective. This footage is immediately uploaded to the Central Interface were it is made available to all other citizens. Their second role is receiving all thoughts produced by their host citizen. These thoughts are also compiled in the Central Interface for the benefit of Society in the form of a personal blog, indexed by time, date, subject matter, and affiliated ideas.
The Central Interface is accessed by citizens through activating the glass panels that make up much of their environment. At which time the panels become a one way display where the citizen accessing the information can see the footage or written thoughts requested while citizens on the other side can still see through the display to view the inquiring citizen
The citizens are obsessed with their own stardom. Eager to out preform, out impress or out scandal others they see through the Central Interface. Driven by knowledge of their image citizens continuously pursue physical improvements. Second to said improvements, actions and accomplishments are most important to the citizens. Constantly updating their thought blog, “Phillip Arnolds is in a relationship with Samantha Turner”, “Joan is ¾ done with her trip around the world, tomorrow she’s in Singapore”, “Sam is cheating on Phil” etc.
Written and audio thought blogs make face to face conversations unnecessary, however some conversation does continue as a form of theater for interested citizens.
Crimes of passion persist, however the possibility of succeeding in a premeditated crime has been reduced to nearly zero. And while trials also become obsolete the act of accusing another citizen of a crime is quite precarious being that the accuser is just as vulnerable as the accused.
The justice department proclaims, “YOU ARE WATCHING” as a slogan to prevent premeditated crime. However, those found to be plotting crimes are banned from viewing the subject of their intended crime until these thoughts subsist. Meanwhile there are placed within a tube-screen where they enjoy watching the lives of other citizens
Every once in a while a citizen wants to try Privacy. They move to the outskirts of the city where there are less viewing screens. This threatening to leave the city gets them a lot of attention and usually culls them back to the center. However, some citizens do commit to leaving the city. As they pass the city limits, their SD31 halts at the edge of town. These decenters can leave town but feelings of neglect and disconnection drives them to return to the city when there are met by their waiting SD31 and seamlessly reintegrate into Society.
