"He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication" (Foucault 98). In any circumstances that I could imagine the Panopticon being employed would be in dystopian societies—George Orwell's 1984 comes to mind. With a watchful eye monitoring their behaviors, the residences (inhabitants? prisoners?) are more than likely to exist in complete obedience. However, the ethical dilemma lies in the fact that they live in the belief that someone is always watching their every move. In the context of an education institution, there would be "no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time" (Foucault 98). Each child works in a sort of perpetual fear that if, God forbid, that one of them turns to cross-check their answers with a peer, they are seen as and accused of cheating.
Of course, Foucault mentions that the Panopticon is not meant to be seen as a "dream building" (99). Searching 'panopticon' on Google Images brings up (a) the architectural Panopticon itself; and (b) how the Panopticon compares to technology users in modern day society. The idea that using any electronic device with access to the Internet is panoptic is eye-opening; the more time I spent thinking about it, the more I began to see the resemblance. It seems rather ironic that while the web is a (the) bank of information and is accessible to anyone with Internet access, we are not the "one [who] sees everything without every being seen" (think in terms of getting resources from the Internet and never having to leave the comfort of your reclusive lifestyle), but rather the "one [who] is totally seen" (Foucault 98). It isn't a surprise that by putting our information and data online, there is bound to be someone in the interface looking at it (and potentially taking it). My virtual activity has always been precarious, but perhaps Foucault's Panopticon is going to make me think twice about the digital age. Now I understand why some people cover their webcams with a sticky note—it's not just paranoia.
I agree, Foucault's theory confronts some pretty scary realities surrounding the internet, media, and surveillance today - especially with the government's increasing infringement upon civil liberties. (Quick pseudo-plug because Carmen already knows this: Nick L'Heureux wrote a really great article on the war on terror and civil liberties within the Obama administration for this issue of The Independent, which you all should check out when it's released on December 2nd). In his piece, Nick cited these statistics from an article published by The Guardian: On a daily basis, the NSA collects “more than 5 million missed-call alerts, for use in contact-chaining analysis (working out someone’s social network from who they contact and when),” as well as the “details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming alerts” and “more than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to extract and save images.” The NSA also collects, again on a daily basis, “over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users” and “almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.”
ReplyDeleteObviously, Foucault's vision of the system of power enacted by the Panopticon has in many ways come to symbolic fruition. We are at once being constantly monitored while at the same time only vaguely aware of this surveillance. The media machine, the internet, the infringement upon civil liberties for the sake of national security, and the state of the developed world realize Foucault's vision of "a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or in time" (Discipline and Punish 210). Everyday we live and witness "the basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms." (Discipline and Punish 210). Foucault's vision seems distinctly dystopian—Orwellian even—but in reality, it's closer to being realized now more than it ever has been in the past. The ideologies that spring from these systems of power (e.g. capitalism, consumerism, even racism) have become so thoroughly integrated into society that power is maintained without the need for force or even an obvious system of operation and control.
So yeah, covering your webcam with a sticky note is justified, but even then it doesn't mean you're not being monitored. Even classmates and friends can become agents within the Panoptic framework—if you transgress from the dictated and silently maintained norm, your behavior will be noticed and someone will inevitably try to change and regulate it, because it is what we know and what is comfortable. Within today's Panopticon, we are monitoring ourselves.