See Me

Student: Jesica Suparo -English Language IV

Review of: See Me,
Yours for the Peeping.
Author: PENELOPE GREEN
Published: November 4, 2007
Source: NEY WORK TIMES
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04green.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

JEREMY FLETCHER and Alejandra Lillo, designers of an architecture and design firm based in Berlin, Beijing and Los Angeles, were working out a dialogue between voyeurism, solitude and exhibitionism, when they designed the shiny white interiors of the W Downtown, a glass-walled condominium tower to be built in Manhattan’s financial district. This architectural trend is another brick on the wall that keep on building the solitude among crowded places; but, ironically, these types of buildings do not only allow the residents to see out but also to be seen by passers-by. The designers say that they are creating stages for people which actually become displays for the others. We are having the need to be seen and too see every aspect of people’s lives; we can check YouTube where we will find thousands of home-made videos where people of all ages and social status videotape themselves just talking or showing themselves to the world. Websites such as Facebook where friends virtually meet; and the now so-called Twitters – a variation of a blog that works through mobile phones, so the posts get to every phone instantly- are proofs that the need for connection is so strong that we use any device to achieve it. There is nothing wrong with self-expression and the exhibition of our inner thoughts. But we should be able to notice when we are trespassing the limits of exhibitionism at one point, and, on the extreme point of the spectrum, the deliberate isolation. Why do we need to be seen all the time? And why the constant need of approval that carries this self-exposure? For many psychologists and professionals this has to do with a global sense of anxiety. We look carefully around us; everything is tainted with some kind of anxiety.

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist of the M.I.T. Program in Science, Technology and Society, explains this phenomenon of the glass towers and expands it: “There is real confusion about intimacy and solitude,” says Professor Turkle, who for more than two decades has been studying computers and the people who love them. “Are we alone in these buildings, facing the anonymity of the city, or are we connected to the city? What do we show and what do we hide?”

Accurately, he states:

“…That (intimacy and solitude) mirrors what happens when we’re on the computer, on our networks in Facebook. We are no longer able to distinguish when we are together and nurtured and when we are alone and isolated. I can be in intimate contact with 300 people on e-mail, but when I look up from my computer I feel bereft. I haven’t heard a voice, touched a hand, for hours or days. I think people are no longer certain where the self resides.”