Interrogations of consumption: the territory of late-stage capitalism in the National Radio Quiet Zone

The cultural logic of postmodernism

Late-stage capitalism represents the third and purer stages of fundamental moments in capitalism’s trajectory, where cultural logic overtakes pure economic production. Frederic Jameson defines late-stage capitalism through a postmodern logic, where commodification extends beyond simply goods and into experiences, making all aspects of life the components of economic transaction.⁵

Jameson considered postmodernism to be a global culture, emerging as dominant in response to post-war American economic and military growth.⁶ The cultural logic has further evolved due to the conditions of American post-traumatic stress that followed the war and expanded with the Cold War, evidenced by elongated circumstances of American and global affairs: the Space Race, the privatisation of the military–industrial complex and the intertwining of the international economies in the 1970s. These circumstances expanded the cultural logic of postmodernism towards a global dominant, but it can attribute its generation to an American and Western European origin.

Postmodernism’s logic can be generally characterised by a lack of historical depth, the spectacle of the image and the simulation of experience without origin. Jameson stakes this claim by stating:

This situation evidently determines what the architecture historians call ‘historicism’, namely the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion, and in general what Henri Lefebvre has called the increasing primacy of the ‘neo’. This omnipresence of pastiche is, however, not incompatible with a certain humour (nor is it innocent of all passion) or at least with addiction – with a whole historically original consumers’ appetite for a world transformed into sheer images of itself and for pseudo-events and ‘spectacles’ (the term of the Situationists). It is for such objects that we may reserve Plato’s conception of the ‘simulacrum’ – the identical copy for which no original has ever existed. Appropriately enough, the culture of the simulacrum comes to life in a society where exchange-value has been generalized to the point at which the very memory of use-value is effaced, a society of which Guy Debord has observed, in an extraordinary phrase, that in it ‘the image has become the final form of commodity reification’ (The Society of the Spectacle). The new spatial logic of the simulacrum can now be expected to have a momentous effect on what used to be historical time.⁷

It is from Jameson’s claims and characteristics of postmodernism that the conceptual framework of a more contemporary cultural logic begins to form. Here, the conceptual framework forms as a series of terms: spectacle, fragmentation, economic trauma, acceleration, nostalgia, globalism, hyperreality and immediacy. Cultural and social activities are transformed into products.

Surveillance capitalism

Mutating from postmodern logic, surveillance capitalism evolves from the commodification of experience to a commodification of behavioural data, where digital content is now up for grabs in a heightened state of late-stage capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as ‘a new economic order that claims human experience as a free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales’.⁸ Zuboff elaborates that surveillance capitalism is ‘a parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioural modifications’.⁹

This economy renders individuals as subjects to databases, surveilled by digital content, web browsing and even mundane purchase choices by continuous monitoring and data harvesting. From this, a spatial range of surveillance strategies is formed to enhance the conceptual framework, including geopolitical controls, megalomaniacal apparatuses, digital camouflage, sameness, manipulation, predictive analytics, behaviour modification and the commodification of identity. This range of spatial surveillance provides insight into the ways that subjective experiences become extractable economic resources through data acquisition.

Image-objects and spectacle

The conceptual framework now turns from the hybridised and mutated surveillance capitalism towards contemporary image culture and media. In the contemporary landscape, digitally crafted content is constantly fed out as a multitude of image-objects, perpetually polluting media feeds of all kinds. These image-objects, such as TikTok videos, Instagram reels, Facebook posts, news media and other fragmented digital artefacts, have become a ubiquitous and perpetual cultural spectacle.

This is not a new phenomenon, but the concept of the image-object has evolved through the meeting of technology and the cultural logic of postmodernism, while expanding with the behavioural modifications informed by surveillance. This has been discussed and explored by others, such as Guy Debord and the Situationists in the 1960s. A new context can be applied to their discussions by looking at the contemporary condition of digital content creation and image-objects that are rampant today. This new context feeds the established contextual framework.

Debord writes about this phenomenon in Society of the Spectacle, specifically in thesis 15: ‘As the indispensable decoration of the objects produced today, as the general exposé of the rationality of the system, as the advanced economic sector which directly shapes a growing multitude of image-objects, the spectacle is the main production of the present-day society.’¹⁰ Here, the spectacle is no longer an aesthetic supplement to capitalism but its primary mode of production. This quotation can be expanded to include how digital media content – the contemporary image-object – is changing how the world is viewed and interpreted. Content and images begin to taste better than reality:

Photoshopped models are more alluring than living people. Luxury labels are worth more than the clothing they brand. The images on food packaging look better than the meal tastes. Welcome to the world of Image Consumption. Among all animals, humans are uniquely capable of ‘consuming’ image instead of substance. In our media-saturated society, it can be hard to see things for what they really are. But what makes reality anymore ‘real’ than our perception of it?¹¹

Addiction to image has engulfed culture to the self-imposed spectacle. Culture is reduced to a subject of the media apparatus, where cultural experience is now shaped by concepts of perpetual on-ness, novice experts, venture philanthropism, uncanny certainty, fetishism of the body, virality, gamification and a perfect life anxiety.

We are now commodified as a product of our over-consumption, behaving as both consumed and consumer.

A focus on the concepts of late-stage capitalism

New experiences of spatial conditions emerge from the schema of the conceptual framework formulated above. These are shaped by the interconnected terms, actions, concepts and subjectivities that begin to construct a broader cultural condition and elaborate on these new experiences. Of the 24 mentioned, six serve as key indicators to turn towards. These six are the primary drivers for critical reflection. They establish themselves as new architectural principles that have the potential for spatial exploration. The remaining 18 offer supplemental reflection but serve as merely secondary owing to their lack of deeper spatial production. The focus of the six concepts orients towards database subjectivity, megalomaniacal apparatus, uncanny certainty, venture philanthropism, novice expertism and perfect life anxiety.

Database subjectivity 

Human experience has become part of a vast database through our digital and physical interactions, caused by the rise of commodification, surveillance capitalism and content culture. This extends beyond just simple social media personas on the web or phone apps and includes financial data, purchasing histories, political ideologies and behavioural habits, among others. The devices that society uses daily, and the terms and conditions that are agreeable, open the experience of the body to a new kind of subjectivity. The body now occupies both physical space and digital air through the harvesting of data. The database becomes omnipotent.

Physical and digital spaces are now experienced simultaneously. Architectural space is becoming delineated to highlight this intersection of physical and digital. At various airports around the globe, convenience retailers offer entry into their space by simply scanning a credit or debit card (Figure 1). The data on an individual’s financial record occupies space just as physical bodies also pass the threshold. The body becomes databased as a physical entity entering space through surveillance footage and digitally through purchasing records. Spatial occupation is simultaneously physical and digital.

Figure 1

Experience of physical and digital space simultaneously. Entry of the Hudson Nonstop Convenience Store at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (Source: Hudson, 2024) 

The experience of the database system is found in physical space but is more profound in the digital interfaces that are encountered every day. Consider what happens when ‘buy now’ is clicked on Amazon: purchases feed an evolving algorithmic database that categorises the purchase as a quantifiable consumer profile – the physical body and analogous digital content form together to become the database subject.¹²

Megalomaniacal apparatus 

The primary spatial predator for the database subject is the megalomaniacal apparatus, corporate entities that exploit data subjects through familiar, seemingly benign interfaces that mask deeper mechanisms of surveillance, prediction, behavioural modification and commodification. The megalomaniacal apparatus is familiar, yet strangely foreign. It creates an architecture of prey, welcoming the physical body into its grasp through signage and monumental arrivals, while exploiting the spatial arrangement within its interiority. It runs on efficiency, in both its spatial configuration and its construction systems, operating as a box with a decorated monumental front.¹³

This is most evident today in the suburban commercial landscape, where big boxes and franchises present themselves as a welcoming domestic space, yet operate as a transactional database, optimising the commodification of consumer behaviours. Look no further than the architecture of the Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart retailers. Walmart welcomes visitors in with its domesticated ‘front door’ façade, often profiled to replicate that of a typical suburban home in America (Figure 2). Once inside, visitors are transformed into database subjects, where the megalomaniacal apparatus preys on their purchasing patterns and behaviours so that the franchise can work logistically to increase merchandise where necessary. Just-in-time logistics becomes a deployable military strategy in the megalomaniacal apparatus.¹⁴ The architecture of the franchise shifts behind the scenes to sell more and create profit for the apparatus.

Figure 2

The familiar and welcoming façade of the megalomaniacal apparatus. Walmart 150 entry in Prince Frederick, Maryland (Source: photo © Alexander Farnsworth/Getty Images, 2023) 

Uncanny certainty 

The media, including reputable news sources and social content alike, has become unstable and unreliable under a deepened late-stage capitalism. The increase of the conspiracies of ‘fake news’, social media influencers and artificial intelligence (AI) internet ‘bots’ has led to a distrust in digital media content. If you have seen a media report recently and thought ‘surely this must be staged’, you have been subjected to the spatial concept of uncanny certainty, where reality itself is destabilised and we are surely uncertain of events folding right before our eyes. This defines a hyperreal condition, where media acceleration blurs the lines between event and simulation.¹⁵

Consider the 2022 Academy Awards, when actor Will Smith slapped actor and comedian Chris Rock on the award season’s biggest stage (Figure 3). The event was instantly mediatised, yet its authenticity was questioned – did that just happen?

Figure 3

Uncanny certainty experienced when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. (Source: photo © Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images, 2022) 

Venture philanthropism 

The rising occurrence of climate-fuelled catastrophic events has created opportunities for philanthropic entities to step in for devastated communities. Venture philanthropism is on the rise just as quickly as the catastrophic events, where private personas assume the roles of public institutions, leveraging crisis response for personal, brand or corporate gain. The media image becomes more important than the community served.

For example, Brad Pitt became a stand-in for the Red Cross after the events of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Figure 4).¹⁶ Following the disaster, Pitt was quick on the scene to support those who lost their homes in the disaster.¹⁷ Pitt’s vision utilised the response of institutionalism for philanthropy but paired it with a new architecture made of pink tents, establishing a recognisable venture investment for his brand. Venture philanthropism exists as a brand identity and establishes itself as a spatial condition.

Figure 4

Venture philanthropist Brad Pitt and Ninth Ward Project after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Source: photo © Matthew Hinton/AFP via Getty Images, 2005) 

Slavoj Žižek discusses this phenomenon further, calling it the ‘chocolate laxative paradox’, claiming venture philanthropism is rooted in a contemporary cultural capitalism – a deepened late-stage capitalism. Žižek speaks specifically about the paradox of George Soros as both a financial hedge-fund investor and philanthropist. Žižek claims that Soros’s financial speculations cause the very global and cultural circumstances in which he later offers help as part of his philanthropy.¹⁸ In contemporary late-stage capitalism, venture philanthropism thrives on creating disaster for profit and gain.

Novice experts 

The ubiquity of social media and content creation in contemporary culture has given rise to the social media influencer – those who use digital content creation to turn a profit. The trendy spike of the influencer economy has given birth to a new type of expert, called here the novice expert – media personalities who assert expertise without having formal credentials. Holding a certain social status, rather than knowledge or skill, qualifies one as an expert in the digital culture of late-stage capitalism.

For instance, the Kelce Brothers, professional American football players, have leveraged their celebrity into domains as disparate as breakfast cereal branding, becoming experts in the perfect cereal mix ratios (Figure 5). Influence supersedes expertism.

Figure 5

Travis and Jason Kelce, professional football players who are now novice experts on breakfast cereal mixes (Source: photo © Michael Frush, 2024) 

Perfect life anxiety 

Ultimately, these concepts culminate in perfect life anxiety. Here, the image-object and media content generate constant anxiety over attaining the perfect life that is often represented through digital media and infinite scrolling. The relentless pressures of aspiration, comparison and fear of missing out are endlessly experienced through seeking the falsehood of perfection. With digital media, the perfect life is often the experience of the interface but not the actualisation of reality.

Perfect life anxiety defines experiencing late-stage capitalism as an unattainable ideal that is projected onto daily life. Anxiety is now integrated into culture as an ingredient in the economic and social structure. Picture an arguably beautiful mountain sunset where, for a moment, the sensory experience of the body appears removed from digital culture. Yet the drive to capture, shape, perform and commodify this experience within digital media reasserts its presence (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Sunset depicting perfect life anxiety, overlooking the NRQZ (Source: photo © Brian Lopez, 2023) 

Just over the mountain towards this sunset lies the unique territory of the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ). The NRQZ is a radio-regulated zone, framed as a geopolitical boundary, restricting radio frequency interference (RFI) owing to the occupation of sensitive radio telescope equipment in Green Bank, West Virginia. At first glance, the NRQZ appears insulated from the logics of late-stage capitalism due to the radio restrictive policies in place, seemingly a refuge from digital saturation. However, a closer examination reveals its embeddedness in the economic and technological conditions it appears to resist. It is both an exception to and a product of late-stage capitalism, illustrating the paradox of attempting escape within an inescapable system.

A brief history

Preceding the establishment of the NRQZ, a coalition of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Allied Universities Incorporated (AUI) established the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at Green Bank, West Virginia, in 1956. At the time, radio astronomy was an emergent yet rapidly advancing field, with competing international programmes. The observatory in Green Bank would promote interest and research in radio astronomy to allow the United States to lead the world in the field of radio astronomy.¹⁹

The NRAO was strategically positioned to assert its dominance over other global radio astronomy programmes. The site in Green Bank was selected based on three factors: proximity to the nation’s capital; natural terrain that helps to shield radio frequencies; and the low-density population offered by the Appalachian town. This siting underscores its status as a database subject – a site chosen for its strategic capacity to manage, extract and control data. This mirrors how the megalomaniacal apparatus manipulates data-driven territorial expansion. The creation of the NRAO reflects larger patterns of late-stage capitalism from scientific imperialism through Western expansion to economic FOMO (fear of missing out) and the fetishisation of state-backed technological development.²⁰

Following the NRAO’s establishment, the NRQZ was formally designated in 1958 as a geopolitical safeguard for radio telescope research. Mandated by federal documents, it sought to minimise interference in an increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum.²¹ Radio telescopes operate by analysing long-wave radio frequencies emitted by astronomical objects, signals that are easily disrupted by human-made transmissions. These frequencies occupy a narrow band within the electromagnetic spectrum, yet they overlap with technological and telecommunication devices such as mobile networks, smart meters, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even gasoline-based vehicle ignition systems. The NRQZ was established to mitigate this interference, reinforcing the observatory’s function as an insulated data collection interface.

Today, the NRAO at Green Bank houses eight radio telescopes. Yet, its defining monument is the towering Green Bank Telescope (GBT), the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.²² Standing at 485 feet, it is both the largest mobile human-made structure and the most imposing built form in West Virginia (Figure 7).²³ Its sheer size positions it as a monument to late-stage capitalism and American postmodern ideology.

Figure 7

The Green Bank Telescope (GBT), colloquially known as the ‘Great Big Thing’ (Source: photo © Michael Frush, 2023) 

The NRQZ spans approximately 13,000 square miles of land between West Virginia, Virginia and a portion of Maryland (Figure 8). In addition to housing the NRAO at Green Bank, the NRQZ is also home to another government-based entity, Sugar Grove Station, a former naval research centre located near Green Bank.

Figure 8

Location of the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) (Source: NRAO/AUI archives, 1970) 

Sugar Grove, no longer a naval research centre, has operated in tandem with the observatory at Green Bank, reflecting an intricate entanglement of scientific research and military surveillance. The facility’s original purpose was to intercept Soviet communications during the Cold War, a mission that transitioned into its current role operating under the National Security Agency. Today, it is rumoured that all communications received along the eastern United States are surveilled, including civilian communications.²⁴ Is the communicable data surveilled for the protection of the nation or is it a process of commodifying digital presence?

The structurally coincidental relationship between Green Bank and Sugar Grove Station begins to offer a deeper reading into late-stage capitalism in the NRQZ. Where Green Bank is presented as an open scientific frontier and symbol of American life, Sugar Grove represents its classified double as a megalomaniacal apparatus – a space of secrecy, control and continuous surveillance for commodification.

A quote from Jean Baudrillard helps in understanding the relationship between Green Bank and Sugar Grove: ‘For the one is the hidden face of the other and they mirror each other across the [desert], the one as acme of secrecy and silence, the other as acme of prostitution and theatricality.’²⁵ While Baudrillard’s quotation references the simulated extremes of the American desert, it provides an apt framework for interpreting the spatial contradictions of the NRQZ within late-stage capitalism. The observatory at Green Bank functions as a public-facing institution of scientific inquiry and apparatus of knowledge production, while Sugar Grove operates in secrecy as a site of surveillance and data extraction. Together, they begin to unveil how the NRQZ embodies the logic of late-stage capitalism, balancing performative appeal with covert analytics. The NRQZ becomes a space for a unique critical reference and creative opportunity in late-stage capitalism’s spatial contradictions.

Late-stage capitalism in the NRQZ

Here it is necessary to return to the conceptual framework of contemporary late-stage capitalism that was formed through the connections of Jameson, Zuboff and Debord. Combined, the work of these three underwrite the theory of the contemporary condition in America, where the cultural logic of late-stage capitalism has mutated into a severe surveillance capitalism and further evolved into a cultural capitalism of image-objects driven by perpetual digital media content.

The formulated conceptual framework of contemporary late-stage capitalism consists of 24 interconnected terms, actions, concepts and subjectivities. These 24 express the experiences and spatial occupations of late-stage capitalism today. Of the 24 formed, the six aforementioned and discussed in detail serve as the primary spatial devices for further critical application of late-stage capitalism to the setting of the NRQZ territory. It is necessary to recall the six concepts of database subjectivity: megalomaniacal apparatus, uncanny certainty, venture philanthropism, novice expertism and perfect life anxiety.

Applying the six concepts to the NRQZ uncovers the mechanisms of contemporary culture that are inescapable, even where geopolitical territories and policies restrict the use of devices that carry the very concepts themselves. In the context of the NRQZ, new forms of presence, embodied experience and meaning are found deeply embedded within the far reaches of late-stage capitalism.

Novice experts 

Green Bank became a refuge for individuals suffering from what is called electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), a contested illness attributed to exposure from devices, electronics and technologies. Although not medically recognised, the condition has generated a subculture of self-identified sufferers.²⁸

In the paradox of late-stage capitalism, EHS sufferers seek escape from digital saturation while simultaneously engaging with media networks to validate their experiences. They become inadvertent media influencers, transforming personal affliction into a form of digital culture (Figure 9). They become novice experts influencing the very digital culture they seek to escape.

Figure 9

EHS influencer Diane Schou (Source: photo © Bournemouth News & Picture Service, 2014) 

Uncanny certainty 

Green Bank features a specialised enforcement unit known as the ‘RFI Police’, tasked with detecting electromagnetic signals from unsanctioned devices.²⁹ Despite the implication of strict regulation, the RFI Police have reportedly never issued a formal monetary fine for interference with the telescope research.³⁰ Are the restrictions of digital devices enforced or is it a form of restriction theatre?

Similarly, the infrastructure of the GBO presents an illusion of strict control. The visual language of security and boundary, marked by red warning lights and restricted access gates, cultivates the impression of heightened regulation, yet these thresholds remain permeable (Figure 10). This symbolic theatricality reinforces Baudrillard’s notion of simulation, suggesting the presence of power rather than any actual enforcement measures. The experience at the Green Bank reservation becomes one of uncanny certainty. It is what we cannot see that we are definitely unsure about.

Figure 10

Threshold gate into the most restrictive zone of the NRQZ (Source: photo © Massimo Berruti, 2017) 

Perfect life anxiety 

These concepts warrant a final return to perfect life anxiety, where the network of late-stage capitalism and the image-object are omnipresent, always lurking in the background and operating within the database to commodify every experience (Figure 11). The NRQZ serves as a microcosm of late-stage capitalism’s omnipresence, even in the spaces that are seemingly disconnected from its digital reach. It represents the paradox of the contemporary era: a desire for reprieve and retreat, inevitably infiltrated by the very structures sought for escape. Even in this radio-restricted zone, late-stage capitalism persists, insidious and adaptive, proving that there is no escaping its grasp.

Figure 11

The GBT, looming as a monument to late-stage capitalism (Source: NRAO/AUI/NSF, 2018) 

Spatial potentials of the NRQZ

The application of the above concepts to the NRQZ offers ripe potential for new spatial conception, warranting new modes of occupation that exist within late-stage capitalism. The spatial conceptions are opportune not only within the NRQZ but also within the larger systems of late-stage capitalism emerging today. Spatial concepts that are ripe for exploration include the very systems that are trendy in digital media content and heavily influenced by social media today.

Initial spatial opportunities include such endeavours as do-it-yourself-ism, childhood nostalgia, security theatre, fantasy sporting for monetary gain, content addiction, doom-scrolling and commodification of conspiracy theories, to suggest only a few. These opportunities encompass many of the above concepts inherent in late-stage capitalism, from database subjectivity to perfect life anxiety. They represent a shortlist of areas that as spatial concepts have potential for architectural endeavour. Each is open to further exploration to create new architectures that are moulded by the cultural conditions of late-stage capitalism. A cyclical cycle is evident.