The Wall, the Window and the Alcove: Visualizing Privacy

Abstract

This papers is an investigation of metaphors and images of walls, most recently made of fire and of code. By extension, the interruption or disruption of the wall, whether as light-giving window or shelter-providing alcove give conceptual form and shape to the theoretical/historical cluster of concepts that support notions of security and autonomy have become indispensable to explorations of the value of privacy and private life. In presenting a series of imaginary spaces where private and public spheres were thought to converge and/or collide, I hope to show that transparency as a political value defended by liberal democracies functions on the basis of a powerful visual and fundamentally spatial metaphor: the window. Privacy is penetrated and protected on the other hand by the architectural construction of an alcove. Cultural relativism does not allow us to avoid the legal, political and social problems that individuals and lawmakers are confronting nations, societies and individuals in the wake of data gathering technologies (Humphreys 2011). The window and the alcove are simple, even primitive elements of built environments, but they are figures for porosity and protection upon which we might be able to construct analogical and theoretical relationships between different times and different cultures.