The Form of Culture and Privacy

In his book, The Culture of Time and Space, Kearns discusses the changes in Form during the beginning of the twentieth century. Form is an aspect of space yet can also imply a lot of sense in different orders. It is a sense of organization among the chaos of life. Some of the major points that Kearns talks about are the blending and equalizing of the classes, the rise of the suburbs, and the dissolution of traditional views of privacy.

Life before this time was very compartmentalized and ordered. The classes had clear distinctions and little interaction. “A place for everything, and everything in its place” is a phrase that describes this time quite well. It is then that things started to change and old conventions started to unravel. The relationships people changed as well. The rise of the suburbs brought many of the popular characteristics of urban and rural living together. Places were closer together but not close enough to be intrusive. It is thanks to the innovations in transport that these new compromises could be brought about. Technology like motion pictures made experiences like theater more available to the general public instead of the more well to do.

Technology was not always beneficial to the sense of form. There was a large rise in the invasion of privacy. Party lines for telephones allowed conversations to listen in on by anyone on the line. Anyone with technical know-how could intercept the radio waves as encryption had not come about yet. The flat plate camera allowed the first paparazzi to come into being. Microphones allowed for increased presence of law enforcement and it became more important to watch what is said.

Fast-forward to today, and many of these changes have been expanded until they have become a fact of life. The distinctions between the classes have been blurred into a full spectrum of socio-economic levels barely distinguishable from the next one. The suburbs are large and thriving and even springing up where there are no cities within an easy drive. These communities have become ever more self-sustained and are not dependent on the cities that they originally sprung from. Movies have become an important part of culture and now anyone can make a video and have it viewed by millions of people around the world.

The pervasiveness of such technology has only increased. A video camera and microphone can be concealed in a space as small as a button. Nearly all of our communication can be listened in on. There are security cameras in the vast portion of public areas. A near permanent electronic record is created for nearly every action taken now a day. Then again think of how much people open their lives up. The number of people who share every thought on Twitter or Facebook is staggering. It is so common to publicly broadcast nearly every aspect of your life on the internet that it is hard to imagine the complaints of the early twentieth century over things that seem benign now.

The form of culture and privacy has changed dramatically over the past one hundred years. It makes one wonder if we will just end in some Big Brother state in another hundred where every action is kept track of.