This part sets out the premises of the official world and describes the emergence of a self-reporting form of society: its cultural technologies and its aesthetic techniques. It defines the epoch of social systems and our indoor social life. The chapter shows how suspense becomes a world principle and stress an aesthetic category. It defines a modern anthropotechnics, or art with humans. It redefines the action zones of a modern world that stages its own conditions and the place of the work of art in it.

The chapter demonstrates how the space and practices of the office--its operations, observations, and...