Perched atop building cornices and on
people's heads, cameras provide us with de Certeau's
voyeuristic vision: flattening the landscape from the privileged perspective
of the person with the camera. De Certeau's vision is described, ironically
enough, from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center--the Web's vision,
supposedly more democratic, from virtually any building overlooking numerous
famous and not-so-famous cities around the world.
An act of authorship? de Certeau would argue not....rather, that it's an
act of voyeurism...an act of totalizing and flattening out, of creating impotent "gods"
(153).
Down in the city itself, where people walk, there are authors
who are shaped by their own trajectories (153) in an emphasis on time to the detriment of space (155). This essay, therefore, seeks to define a
space based on surveillance, based on the privileged gaze of
voyeurs and of gods to illustrate how we are defined through the play of those roles on the Web.