Seeing Like a Doorbell
publication, information-richnessWhat does a doorbell see? Over the last decade, as sensors and software have merged with the hardware of the household, doorbell cameras have transformed the front door, porch, building facade, and the app-networked neighborhood into a zone of continuous surveillance.
To see like a doorbell is to see like a state and a market simultaneously. Fron Amazon Ring to Flock Safety, this article examines “smart” doorbell technology through the one-way viewer / the platform-seeing ensemble, the property setback / precarious delivery worker, and the door / the Fourth Amendment. As home security technology is tightly coupled with American homeownership, its recording technologies are normalized as inevitable—so much so that it has become easier to imagine the end of neighborly relations than the end of surveillance.
To see like a doorbell is to see like a state and a market simultaneously. Fron Amazon Ring to Flock Safety, this article examines “smart” doorbell technology through the one-way viewer / the platform-seeing ensemble, the property setback / precarious delivery worker, and the door / the Fourth Amendment. As home security technology is tightly coupled with American homeownership, its recording technologies are normalized as inevitable—so much so that it has become easier to imagine the end of neighborly relations than the end of surveillance.
