expository society

is a modern form of power beyond 'spectacle' and surveillance to forms of exhibition or exposition on the web.

Guy Debord spoke of 'the society of the spectacle,' Foucault drew our attention instead to 'the punitive society,' but it seems as if, today, we live in the expository society. This essay offers an architectural schema to better understand our contemporary distributions of power, one that focuses on the themed space of consumption. It then actualizes the metaphor by exploring one particular manifestation of a fully-digitized themed space, and asks how we have come to embrace and love these new forms of exhibition today.

expository society, n.All

expository society