For an updated analysis of Foucault's Panoptican in a technological world filled with surveillance and increasingly invasive technology, see the following article. It is a dense read, but worth the effort. Below are a few excerpts:
Foucault described how surveillance disciplined people in enclosed spaces – the prison, the barracks, the hospital, the factory, the school. Design and techniques (the institution’s daily ‘regime’) eventually made bodies docile.
To participate in consumer society, you have to be watched. It’s not so much that resistance is futile. It’s more that you wouldn’t if you could.
Surveillance no longer reforms bodies, but rather grants physical access.
2 comments:
Thank you for this article. That we are being watched is no secret. Try to get through life in America without a driver's license. Try to purchase gas at a filling station and you may be asked for your zip code in order to validate yourself as "safe" to the vendor. How far you drive to the station, what make of car you have, the color, the added items, whether you bought at the pump or in the store, your automobile license number, all this and more is and can be collected. Soon even facial recognition. The concept of the disappearance of disappearance is such thought provoking issue in and of itself. We begin to butt heads with the understanding that "profiling" is inherently bad. Whether it is racially motivated, gender, age, language, it all smacks of assumptions and typing limiting at least our psychological if not spiritual lives. Even as we rebel our rebellion can be observed and understood, then finally, controlled. Channeling rebellion into the desires of the observer is ominous.
Try to "drop out" and you will be found out. Drop out and when you are found out you will be "typed" as someone to fear. The speed, intelligence, and accuracy of future monitoring systems will render individual and group efforts to escape into anonymity mote. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
I, for one, may some day rebel. However, I will be an old enough man that being "caught" will be of little reward to the system. I will die soon after from natural causes. I, therefore, will be, in my own mind, a coward. The brave will drop out early in life, or at least try. The price they will pay will be horrible.
I have decided that I will never pay a ticket issued to me by a machine on what I consider Constitutional grounds. I will push that to the limit regardless of legal precedence. Technology as a force magnifier for the police is a frightening thing. I read a history of the occupation of Holland by the Nazis. The SS were basically able to subdue the entire country with only one or two hundred men. They used communications and terror to direct one group of citizens to control another group. In the 1930's technology was quite limited. Now!? Ticket me with a video camera and I will demand to see "the man who accuses me." This will be my Waterloo.
Great article
Thank you for this article. That we are being watched is no secret. Try to get through life in America without a driver's license. Try to purchase gas at a filling station and you may be asked for your zip code in order to validate yourself as "safe" to the vendor. How far you drive to the station, what make of car you have, the color, the added items, whether you bought at the pump or in the store, your automobile license number, all this and more is and can be collected. Soon even facial recognition. The concept of the disappearance of disappearance is such thought provoking issue in and of itself. We begin to butt heads with the understanding that "profiling" is inherently bad. Whether it is racially motivated, gender, age, language, it all smacks of assumptions and typing limiting at least our psychological if not spiritual lives. Even as we rebel our rebellion can be observed and understood, then finally, controlled. Channeling rebellion into the desires of the observer is ominous.
Try to "drop out" and you will be found out. Drop out and when you are found out you will be "typed" as someone to fear. The speed, intelligence, and accuracy of future monitoring systems will render individual and group efforts to escape into anonymity mote. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
I, for one, may some day rebel. However, I will be an old enough man that being "caught" will be of little reward to the system. I will die soon after from natural causes. I, therefore, will be, in my own mind, a coward. The brave will drop out early in life, or at least try. The price they will pay will be horrible.
I have decided that I will never pay a ticket issued to me by a machine on what I consider Constitutional grounds. I will push that to the limit regardless of legal precedence. Technology as a force magnifier for the police is a frightening thing. I read a history of the occupation of Holland by the Nazis. The SS were basically able to subdue the entire country with only one or two hundred men. They used communications and terror to direct one group of citizens to control another group. In the 1930's technology was quite limited. Now!? Ticket me with a video camera and I will demand to see "the man who accuses me." This will be my Waterloo.
Great article
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