Technopoly

Abstract

Joseph Fouché, the architect of high policing in revolutionary France around 1800, is supposed to have said to the emperor Napoleon that if at that very moment three people were having a conversation somewhere in Paris, probably one of them would be working for him. His report would be on Fouché’s desk the next morning. It is doubtful whether Fouché’s system ever reached this level of sophistication, but the story touches the very essence of (high) policing: obtaining information. In the days of Joseph Fouché and in many ways until this very day, obtaining information was and is done in the physical world (observation, interrogation, dossier analyses, informant handling and so on).