The identity, societal institutions and political power - Essay Example

World geography has evolved greatly as increased communication shortened distance and decreased time. Factories brought large numbers of people to small areas, shifting the worldview toward a more objective culture. There are numerous complex relationships apparent between the advances in technology to the degree of subjectivity inherent in a particular society. A feature of capitalism is the imposition of a work discipline while eliminating self-organization (Thompson, 1967). Artisans were brought together to work within the mills, using techniques different from the cottage industries.

“The nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another …, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others” (Simmel, 1903). This “colossal centralization, this agglomeration of three and a half million people on a single spot has multiplied the strength of these three and a half million inhabitants a hundredfold” (Engels, 1987) creating a need to institute control in the form of surveillance.

To preserve the individual, a celebration of the Aryan and German rites and myths grew and was incorporated into the Nazi cult. The Nazis oppressed the Jewish population by confiscating property and separating them from the population to be shot at directly or shipped away to concentration camps. Some were used like machinery while others were exterminated immediately. The terror inflicted served to keep the people obedient. Individuality was actively feared as it created a prime target for the next display of violence.

American history yields the Manhattan Project in response, the results being the Atomic bombs which were dropped on Japan. This project developed a culture all its own. A number of techniques were employed for secrecy, including the manipulation of languages (Atomic Spaces, 1997). The physical landscapes manufactured through this project reflected a complex ideology, blending corporate capitalism, government social management and military codes of coercion into an alternative culture (Atomic Spaces, 1997).

Exhibitions served as doorways of knowledge about history and technology. In the words of Prince Albert at the 1851 World Fair, exhibitions provide “a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions.” Through them, individuals expand their ideas, returning to the subjective. “As members of a great metropolis, to think of the world at large, we may lay the foundation for a pattern of life which would have an enormous impact in times to come” (Mumford, 1970).

Cinema has proven to explore the identity, societal institutions and political power struggles of the Metropolis. While “the presence of the original [was] the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity,” in the cinema “the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility” (Benjamin, 1969). The cinema also provided an acceptable space for women in the public sphere. Through this, one can see technology has driven change and change has driven technology.