Just what is “panopticism?” It began with an architectural idea for a prison in the late 17th century. The planned design would place a watchtower in the center of a circle of inmate cells built in tiers, with their fronts open to the watchtower. The sides and backs of the cells would be solid, so the prisoners could not see each other. The windows of the watchtower would be dark, so the inmates also could not see the guards, and therefore would never know when they were being viewed. The design was designated a “Panopticon,” from Greek word roots meaning “all-seeing.”
Jeremy Bentham, the man who designed the Panopticon, was not an architect, but he was a philosopher and social theorist, who claimed his design would work just as well in other public institutions, such as schools, insane asylums, hospitals, orphanages, and poorhouses. Bentham claimed buildings constructed as a Panopticon would allow staff to easily monitor the behavior of the residents, meting out appropriate discipline or punishment without warning. (I find it interesting that institutions of education, medicine, and welfare are included in the same list as prisons, as if children, the poor, and the sick had committed some crime and were in need of constant monitoring for the purpose of correction. Bentham’s idea certainly speaks volumes about the 18th century viewpoint toward the helpless and the ignorant.) According to Bentham, the “inmates” of a Panopticon would eventually police themselves for fear of being caught misbehaving, and the final result would ultimately be complete mind-control of the residents, even though it would appear from the outside that they controlled themselves.
No Panopticon has ever been built, though the idea of a central area of surveillance has been incorporated to varying degrees in modern prison design. However, the Panopticon as a concept has persisted, and was of particular interest to the 20th century French social theorist Michel Foucault. In his seminal work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault claims that panopticism can be viewed as a metaphor for power relations; a hierarchy of power is created between the centrally-located “watcher” who can look at those within view at anytime, without the “watched” being aware of it. According to Foucault, the metaphor of the Panopticon could be applied to any entity, such as a government, or even a society as a whole, which desired to observe and “normalize” its members to fit a certain model of behavior.
For Foucault, the practice of panopticism can be especially problematic because it can be exercised invisibly. In “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish, Foucault points out that panopticism as a system of power can be applied for small cost in time, money or energy, be so subtle as to arouse little suspicion, and can result in great economic and social benefits to those who are the “watchers.” (The Foucault Reader, 207). An examination of the changes in social structures which resulted in the middle class becoming dominant (211) leads Foucault to claim that, despite the outward appearance of our contemporary political, social, and justice system as egalitarian, there are actually “tiny, everyday…systems of micropower that are essentially nonegalitarian and asymmetrical which we call the disciplines” (211). In other words, Foucault is saying that, while the social structures of modern society, whether they are legal, political, or cultural, claim to be fair, generous, and concerned with the well-being of everyone, underneath they are really concerned with watching over all citizens and controlling their behavior.
Foucault states that “the contract,” meaning the ideals behind our social systems, “may have been regarded as the ideal foundation” for modern society, but that “panopticism constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coercion” (211). So, while it may appear that, within the agreed-upon laws and social values, citizens are free to behave as they wish, there is always a central and intolerant “watcher” of some kind, one that observes us constantly, and metes out discipline in order to control our behavior, our thinking, and our emotions. In doing so, the watcher gains incredible power over us, without us ever resisting. As Foucault states, the fact the observed will comply with the wishes of the observer, will effectively discipline themselves, constitutes a sort of punishment, even though it may not appear to be detrimental (213). Foucault goes on to claim that there is “an infinitely minute web of panoptic techniques…” (213); panopticism can be practiced anywhere, in any type of relationship between a group and a central system. It therefore becomes a form of power relations within society, and shapes the culture it inhabits.
So, what does this mean in the online world? Arguably, to enter the World Wide Web is to take up residence in a Panopticon. The central servers of any website, be it social media, gaming, shopping, research, networking, or any other form of digital connectivity, are capable of observing and responding to our behavior in an instant. For example, the central "watcher" (the server) of a shopping site observes what items you click on to view, calculates some parameters for your preferences, and up pop suggestions for other items to consider. In the meantime, there is probably a space on your screen page which keeps a list of the items you've viewed, so you can conveniently go back to them quickly should you decide to make a purchase. By doing this, the site is "disciplining" your behavior in order to encourage you to buy something.
On a social media site, we have no way of knowing just who is online, lurking in the background. Those who are not "visible" at any given moment become the powerful "watcher," and many of us edit what we say and do on such sites for fear of eliciting an angry or derogatory "flame" response or disapproving comments from others. And lest we forget, more sites than we care to know cooperate with our government, allowing access to our online behavior or sharing information which the government has deemed a risk to "national security." This type of monitoring happens unseen, and sometimes randomly, allowing no opportunity to resist or complain. The "contract" (as Foucault would say) that we think we've signed when we go online, the contract that says we have freedom of use, freedom of expression, and freedom of choice, turns out to be an endless series of Panopticons.
