Virtual Patrol
Virtual State Patrol controls the hegemony of resources of interpretation. The monopoly of conceptual space has no choice but to commodify imagination and to hardwire desire. Awareness and thought are appropriated, packaged and sold back to the public. Production of wealth in the empire of signs is the reproduction of scarcity and the cyberpoliced poverty of everything outside. While the geography of power guarantees the effectiveness of separation and borders, hypermedia data cooked behind predefined windows is beaming meaning into the eye of the beholder. Like icons of saints in churches or the decoration of a stage illusionist, the electronic medium channels images of idols and sigils of desire through tele-visions of public awareness - a permanent broadcast of an image-based totalitarian gospel pacing the biomass. The concept of the "evil eye" easily becomes transparent in this omniscient, totally pervasive network of surveillance and scanning systems. Mass Population Identification Tracking Systems shaping our Data Bodies form a ghostly doppelganger virtually taking over our legal existence. The "primitive" fear of having one's soul stolen by the automaton gaze of a camera on the way towards direct neural linkage and implanted bionic eyes rings true after all. That which is real but is not seen in the grid of the digital metaverse has the power of the occult, of the imagination and by its very existence challenges the world of commodified images and consensual reality. Even at its most hidden it exercises a secret magnetic effect bringing about subtle changes.