The Panopticon It is commonplace amongst cultural theorists t | Open Ended Place | Public

The Panopticon

It is commonplace amongst cultural theorists to argue that modern society is a Big Brother state, with certain powerful individuals eyeing our every move and decision, not unlike Big Brother in George Orwell’s classic tale of a totalitarian dystopia, 1984. But such arguments miss a larger point: For there to be a Big Brother state, there has to be someone watching us. What we actually live in is a voluntary, self-policing panopticon. That is, we all submit every aspect of our lives to be monitored, but someone is not necessarily watching.

As conceived by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the panopticon would be a way of making a cheaper, more efficient prison. In his design, a central tower would house all the prison guards, and, through holes in each cell, they would be able to monitor the prisoners’ every movement from within. Bentham believed that the mere act of potentially being monitored would prevent the prisoners from misbehaving, allowing the prison to not even have a guard on duty at all times. Thus, the watched would effectively do the watching.

Does this not describe our self-obsessed realities? We create online identities for ourselves to broadcast to the world, constantly thinking about how any potential action would be viewed by others online. In doing so, we police ourselves and prevent originality or deviant behaviors, not wanting to rock the proverbial boat. Social media thus becomes the panopticon, and we its prisoners. And, just like in the panopticon, we cannot be certain that anyone is actually watching what we do, but we let the mere fact that someone might be watching dictate our behavior.

From ReadTheory