Osservazione, sorveglianza e controllo

The obsession with monitoring and control permeating contemporary civilization seems to be motivated by the need to mitigate the uneasiness of a time marked by constant social and technological changes. Surveillance and control fit well into Tocqueville's previously projected propensity to induce individuals to only indulge in the enjoyment of petty pleasures, in which Plato's definition of the concupiscible component of the soul predominates. In this context, the idea of freedom itself suffers from an anomalous compression, which this essay sets out to investigate.