The Antisocial Socialist

Everyone can see your screen! Potentially.

It's so obvious that someone else must have thought of it. (I mean, it occurred to me as soon as I started working in one.) But I've never read anything on it.

It's a bit of an awkward subject to bring up, too. ("Please don't put the new person at my old desk. It makes me paranoid.")

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 can't imagine that it does much for morale.

Oh, lots of people do. It's sort of ripe for it.

You don't. Or you hope that there aren't video cameras in the washroom.