First, the bidirectionality aspect (or non-aspect) seem to be a concern for a lot of people (including myself). I just want to bring up a couple examples of windows that aren't screens, but have the aspect of non-bidirectionality: one-way mirrors, peepholes, and of course (and possibly the most important in this discussion) the Bentham's Panopticon project. While of course, windows certainly (by and large) allow subjects to see out and subjects to see in. And screens (TV, websites, etc etc) usually are only seen from the outside (i.e. seen in). However, let's complicate this with: texting real-time messages on TV shows (etc), viewers comments, one of Liz Canner's projects about 9/11 (I believe) where everyone had the ability to change the projection in real-time.
To contribute to Reid's argument, I would argue that looking out of a physical window, space and time are NOT radically different. In fact, I would argue they are the same. I am experiencing life in "real time" and in "real space" when I look out a window (when I'm waiting for a bus in the pouring rain on Thayer St. in Starbucks). I believe Deluze's article references the media/news depicting Osama Bin Laden speaking and then following Bush speaking. Obviously Bin Laden and Bush were not speaking to one another in the same time and in the same place. Our physical, literal window would certainly not be able to manipulate images/videos/holograms (well, presently) for this to happen.
But that aside, I'd really like to juxtapose the Bentham's Project and the current "publicity [that] tears us from our selves, exposes us to and involves us with others" (133). What sort of insights does Bentham's Project provide for this theory of publicity? Or does it? I'm particularly fascinated by this idea that the prisoner is held prisoner not BY the jailer, pheself, but rather by the IDEA/POSSIBILITY that the jailer is seeing the prisoner. He writes:
"The terrifying economy of the panoptic structure lies in the fact that this autosurveillance itslef can do without seeing, requiring only light as the possibilty of light. [...] Still ... the figure of the human as prisoner -- secure captive of self-knowledge and of a closed interiority, of peace and quiet, looking without seeing -- is challenged, disfigured, by the blinding light of another window." (128-129).
Sound familiar? Let's consider Keenan's description of the public and of publicity:
"In public, exposed to the blinding light of the other, I am without precisely the self-possession that would otherwise constitute my freedom. The enlightement of this other light opens me not by freeing me but by exposing me, to all that is different and beyond me." (136)
In section or at some point, I'd like to discuss the comparisons of these two concepts. But also really dig deep into why we could be considered both jailers and prisoners to the public. And how we continually are asked to "auto-survey" (i.e. autosurvelliance) by media and how we maybe be blinded by this fact. By making companies and advertising having a "soul" by also how media and screens allow us to "contribute" or seem to "contribute" to the media.... but not really. I'm pretty interested into this quote:
"The public is not collection of private individuals experiencing their commonality, nor the view organized for and by the human of what might gather it together The public is the experience, if we can call it that, of the interruption or the individual human subject, the unavoidable entrance of alterity into the everday life of the "one" who would be human. The public -- in which we encounter what we are not -- belongs to the rights of others and to no one in particular." (133)
How can we apply this to the constant barrage of pharmaceutical commericals (i.e. Orgasm, Inc. and the creation of FSD)? And lastly, WHO is controlling the light? Or maybe it's not WHO is doing it but more: where does it come from and what can we do about it?
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