The
Panoptic Society or Immortally in Love with Death
Peter Weibel
2001
This interactive piece is a time slot into the future of our emerging
panoptic society, where prisons become commercially run private institutions,
which have to profit from their inhabitants. A means of capitalising
on the inmates can be by pay per view, mail, e-mail, phone; the more interesting the crime, the more interesting
the prisoner, the bigger the public, the bigger the profit.
Prisons will compete for the most prominent and pervert prisoners.
The cruellest killers will be the fatal attractors in this panoptic
society, gaining fame, glamour and fortune. They will become media stars (see: Oklahoma Bomber). As a consequence people
who have achieved nothing in life in a traditional way will commit
crimes, and murders of utmost atrocity to become rich and famous in
a way that our panoptic media society favours. These people will become
so important for the maintenance of the media system that after their
death they will be secretly replaced by virtual doubles and avatars.
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