This week’s reading is all about Panopticon surveillance and the affects it has on society and individuals.
When reading this week’s reading a movie came to my mind as an example of this type of surveillance. Enemy of the state (1998), in this film the protagonist is tracked using a wide range of surveillance equipment.
Panopticon surveillance is not just present in fiction and gaols. It is with us almost all the time, when we have our phone on, when we update our status, use a credit/student car, Drive our car on a toll road. Traveling in any major developed CBD you will discover many CCTV cameras which have become the modern tower in the centre of the panopticon gaol. No one has to be watching the CCTV monitors, the cameras don’t even need to be real but the fact they are there acts as preventative discipline. That is they modify the behaviour of individuals through the fear of being seen doing wrong.
Bibliography
Foucault. M, 1977, ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Penguin, London, pp 195-228.
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