The Panopticon was a model for a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham. The idea is that there's a guard post in the centre with a ring of cells around it. The guard can be looking at any of the prisoners at any time, but they don't know when, so even though they aren't technically under constant surveillance, the effect was the same (and at a much lower cost). Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, argued that modern society was much the same.
With an open-concept office, the oft-mocked (but protective) cubicle is missing, so while you may not feel like you're being factory-farmed, your work, or lack thereof, is potentially viewable to anyone and everyone at any given moment. It's a brilliant way to keep people under control and well-behaved.
I think I can say with a high degree of empiricism that the opposite is true as well. If you have a little corner office that nobody has to walk by much, chances are good you'll blog and write emails all day, just as Foucault predicted. Ok, he didn't.
'Cept that in my office all cubicles are set up so that the worker, sitting at her computer, has her back to the entrance and corridor. So anyone walking along the carpeted corridor can see her work, but she can't see when anyone's coming, and has a perpetually itchy spot between her shoulder blades.
It's worse than the open concept office, where you can at least see who's lookin' at you.
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With an open-concept office, the oft-mocked (but protective) cubicle is missing, so while you may not feel like you're being factory-farmed, your work, or lack thereof, is potentially viewable to anyone and everyone at any given moment. It's a brilliant way to keep people under control and well-behaved.
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Maybe because he's dead.
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It's worse than the open concept office, where you can at least see who's lookin' at you.
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I'd go nuts.