Foucault: Panopticism

In re-reading Foucault's Panopticism, I was reminded of the dystopian society depicted in Orwell's 1984. In 1984, totalitarianism has all but eliminated people's individuality and privacy. They are constantly being watched by Big Brother. Even their thoughts are controlled. In Foucault's prison, Big Brother is replaced by an invisible presence: prisoners are constantly watched by an unseen judge, a punishing and omnipresent God, who knows one's every move. Foucault describes how "the vast mechanism [of incarceration] established a slow, continuous, imperceptible gradation that made it possible to pass naturally from disorder to offence and back from a transgression of the law to a slight departure from a rule, an average, a demand, a norm" (p. 307). Is prison a place created to protect society from violent criminals or is its real purpose to silence anyone who deviates from a norm, a rule, established and enforced by the power elite?

Another totalitarian image that comes to mind from our semester readings/viewings is the swaying, automaton-like workers in Metropolis, stripped of individuality, watched constantly. They inhabit a hellish world created solely for the profit of the elite who reside high up above their world.

All of the above authors--from Orwell to Foucault--were writing before the advent of the Internet. While the Internet opens up new lines of communication, it also is subject to hacking, cybercrime, and identity theft. At a seminar about promoting the arts on the internet, a prominent PR person boasted that soon his company would be able to track every website visited and purchase made by consumers. For a monthly fee, even a modest-sized company could find out the habits and preferences of potential consumers. If small nonprofit organizations have access to this kind of information, imagine what corporate giants can do! Do we know what information is being gathered, stored and disseminated to government agencies and employers about us? And how do we address this invasion of our privacy, other than by avoiding the Internet?