“Panopticism” Responses
1. The concept of the panopticon has been used as a trope in numerous science fiction novels. Perhaps the most canonical work is that of 1984, which proposes a futuristic society where every action, every behaviour is monitored for conformance to an arbitrary rule. 1984 takes the ideas even further by having those rules change without logic or reason, always keeping the individuals in that society in a perpetual state of shock. And perhaps this idea of perpetual shock is not so off the mark from what has been happening in society today. Naomi Kline details some extreme examples of this state of shock in her book “The Shock Doctrine”. In that book she shows how “practitioners of the shock doctrine tend to seek a blank slate on which to create their ideal free market economies, which inevitably requires a usually violent destruction of the existing economic order” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine which quotes from the introduction to her book. I do not have a current copy of the book present to find the particular page this comes from). The practitioners of this doctrine seek to create the perfect panoptic laboratory, a space where those who enter are as babes, ready to be filled with only the knowledge and behaviours that the wardens deem appropriate.
2. A discussion of the of the panopticon in contemporary culture cannot be complete without mention of modern social networking sites on the internet. Facebook provides a particularly apt example of a contemporary panoptic system. With Facebook, users can see and interact with any other person they deem as “friend” on their system. With few exceptions, posts are always visible to all ones “friends”, and even often friends of friends. The site itself is largely public, visible to those from the outside at any moment. This primary visible portion of the service provided is one of a conversation, a place where one can find and stay in touch with ones friends and family. Facebook provides this as a “free” service. But what is not readily made apparent is the real “hidden” business, that of collecting and correlating data about Facebook users to sell to sell on the open marketplace. In an interesting twist on old bartering models of exchange, the users of the system are trading their personal information, behaviours, and their friend associations, for access to a system that provides them a communication avenue with their friends and acquaintances. The data acquired and sold by Facebook is most frequently used by other businesses as a way to market products to specifically targeted audiences. It is also occasionally used as a method of screening job applicants, or as an investigative tool by government agencies. Facebook is an almost perfect example of the panoptic principles; the participants may be both the observers and the observed, their data is constantly visible to themselves and others, the system may at any time be used as a method of controlling the behaviour and available opportunities of the participants, and it is a laboratory for experimenting with new forms of influence and control.
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