Open Office Plans and the Panopticon

There's a lot of backlash against "open office" concepts in the workplace. It's the relatively recent trend of tearing down the cubicle and having most workers operate at open desks where their computer monitors can be easily observed by passerby or even neighboring coworkers.

The major complaint to this change from the cubicle stereotype of Office Space and The Matrix seems to be that this only enables boss surveillance. It takes the physical imprisonment of the cubicle wall and transform it into an internalized Foucault-style panopticon device. Which, admittedly, seems worse.

All that said, I very briefly worked inside a literal cubicle and I don't think that would have a good impact on my psyche either.

Personally, I wouldn't want to return to a cubicle life. In theory, I like the idea of open access to fellow human beings. I just feel like the norm should be that we are still entitled to do whatever the hell we want in our own space and the only metric that we should be judged by is whether we meet our deadlines.

Everything's becoming more of a literal panopticon. Or maybe it's the same level of panopticon and it just takes different shapes with shifts in technology and societal mechanisms. And so the freedom lies in breaking our social expectations.

Don't bring back the cubicle. Lure them into building the walls in your mind and then tear them down on your own turf. Maybe.