Panopticons and Panoramas

In the cyber-world, we can all see and be seen. It is a scenery of freedom as well as of absolute control. It is the perfect place where the concept of the Panopticon developed by Michelle Foucault could take place; it is a homogeneous, horizontal platform crossed vertically trough the eyes of the state.  It is the panorama of an informational underworld that affirms a virtual, yet real space. Still, this "underworld" lies at the surface, there is an over-exposure of privacy, where overpopulated virtual communities and ghostlike presences assert a new type of superficial territoriality.

The geography of the planet has changed; there is a new cyber territory that has been added to reality. "The sixth continent" that Paul Virilio describes in “The Information Bomb”, goes beyond our nationality and our very own culture. It has become a fundamental region that holds the globalized world together. Here, diverse ideas flow freely in compatible platforms; unbound from provinces, released from territories. Localisms fuse into this infinite net of information.

 The science fiction era and the techno-scientific myth of the industrial omnipresence of man in space have ended. Those cosmic illusions, that dream of man to escape and conquer the universe have mutated, turning into the triumph over an equally infinite and universal virtual space.