I really
enjoyed the perception Foucault wrote from and many of his concepts
particularly stuck out to me. The strongest part about his work was his was of
paralleling our social construct to a prison.
The idea
of a panopticon, as it relates to a prison, is that if the security tower is in
plane sight, the inmates will assumes that they are always being watched. A
perfect example of a panopticon can be seen in the prison scene in Guardians of the Galaxy, as we discussed
in class.
In his
work, Foucault relates the physical idea of a panotpicon to the confines that
define our social norms. Although I had never heard these kinds of ideas put
within the context of a prison, my mind instantly went to the idea of “Big
Brother” always watching. Especially now, in the age where googling is an
oxford-official verb and everyone from age six to sixty has a Facebook account,
the idea of a social panopticon has never been more real.
“Power
should be visible and unverifiable” (98), which is what makes it so terrifying.
The scary part about power now is that everyone has more of it at the tip of
their fingers. The idea of privacy on the internet doesn’t exist, and that is
largely do to the fact that once you put something out there, it will be out
there forever.
In doing
some outside research, I came across a very interesting video on youtube that
did a very a good job of explaining a social panopticon in a modern context. I
may come of a bit over the top at times, but it addresses some key topics we
discussed in class.
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