The Panopticon in the Digital World

Proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the 1791 as an architectural form for a prison, the panopticon was designed to monitor prisoners from a central tower that has been located towards the cells, which are in a circular shape. The important thing here is that the prisoners do not know if they are being watched or not. A constant light that observe every behaviour you do. What kept the prisoners in line was not the surveillance itself but the idea of being watched. However, it is not so different than today’s world since we also behave as though we are always being watched. In his 1975 book Surveiller et Punir, which was translated into English as Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault reintroduced Bentham’s idea of Panopticon.

'Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other.'

 'They arelike so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor isalone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panopticmechanism arranges spatial unides that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately.'

He explores how power of the government and systems of punishment and surveillance evolved with modernization. Also, he discusses the two period, which he terms as a ‘culture of spectacle’ and ‘carceral culture.’ The former term refers to the pre-modern punishment, which was before 18th century, in which punishment was displayed in front of the public, physical, and violent. It was aimed to deter criminal from committing crime and to reassure and show the power of the ruler.

"The ceremony of punishment, then, is an exercise of 'terror'."

'Yet, in fact, what had hitherto maintained this practice of torture was not an economy of example, in the sense in which it was to be understood at the time of the ideologues (that the representation of the penalty should be greater than the interest of the crime), but a policy of terror: to make everyone aware, through the body of the criminal, of the unrestrained presence of the sovereign.'

The latter, carceral culture, points out to the new and modern form of punishment that has focused on the mind, behaviour, and surveillance, shifting from the physical torture to the psychological and hidden discipline of the modern societies.

 'Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penalty? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?'

Foucault attributes this shift to a change in the mechanisms of power. Bentham’s Panopticon becomes a symbolic representation of modern disciplinary institutions. Yet this system of power is also visible in today’s world. As Shoshana Zuboff articulates, this new mode of surveillance—surveillance capitalism—collect behavioural data through companies such as Facebook and Google to predict and shape behaviour.

 'In this new context, users were no longer an end-in-themselves. Instead they became a means to profits in a new kind of marketplace in which users are neither buyers nor sellers nor products. Users are the source of free raw material that feeds a new kind of manufacturing process.'

Zuboff claims that, in this new system, the user is not the customer but the raw material. What results is a profound psychological shift: just like Bentham’s prisoners, people today self-censor, self-regulate, and even self-optimize in accordance with invisible but powerful expectations. Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism reshapes people into consumable, predictable patterns. We seek conformity and approval, internalizing algorithmically shaped desires and needs.