In the place of the internalisation of an external gaze that characterised disciplinary societies, we see the emergence of a complex of control and communication that is no longer externalised in a central command but rather operates on a social and psychological level. Such a shift has been identified in a number of contributions to ZKM's CTRL[SPACE] catalogue: whereas Orwell's 1984 expressed and embodied a fear of the future as a place in which all people and all things would be observed at all times, we now live in a present, it is claimed, characterised by "scopophilia", a mix of voyeurism and exhibitionism, and an ontological need to be observed. While this perspective may have its limits beyond the still-exceptional cases of web-cams and reality TV, with the everyday use of consumer devices such as mobile phones surveillance is being dispersed and also transformed, a technical capacity to locate becoming a tool to help us consume better and a new form of entertainment (CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, ZKM, Karlsruhe/The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002).
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A long quote but very interesting in relation to the project, especially when as suggested this move from a disciplinary society, has changed from external gazing (for example a security camera, or control conditions in a certain environment) towards the ontological need to be observed in contemporary culture, whereby we invite self-surveillance, rather than it being forced on us -- through consumption and pleasure
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