I have seen that word twice in two days. No idea what it means and discovery of an vague frame of reference to which it may belong was not revealed by its use in context.
For example, this is how it appeared when I saw it this morning and decided that I need to know what it is if I am to encounter it again. Like figuring out the word and how to spell it by asking it to be used in a sentence. To disambiguate the word. Disambiguation was a prior word that bugged me as a kid until I looked it up in the dictionary. Now we have Google and Wikipedia.
But I digress, as I usually do. This is how it was used in a sentence: "We wanted to build a global village – only to end up with a global panopticon instead."
The Wikipedia explanation of a panopticon:
"The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow a single watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. Although it is physically impossible for the single watchman to observe all cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that all inmates must act as though they are watched at all times, effectively controlling their own behavior constantly. The name is also a reference to Panoptes from Greek mythology; he was a giant with a hundred eyes and thus was known to be a very effective watchman."
I get it! I get why I have seen it used recently. Actually more than twice. I knew what a panopticon prison design was but had not connected the meaning of the structure to the word.
One word explains the rise of panopticon from obscurity: NSA. That is a word? Guess so, it has meaning and nothing conveys that meaning more than panopticon, if you know what I mean. My spell checker has yet to learn that it is a real word.
This is a gem from the Wikipedia description of the word:
"Bentham (the designer) himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”[1
Can you say NSA?
The more I read the Wikipedia description of the word the more poetic it became. Poetic? Yes, I suppose in that there are so many interpretations when used metaphorically.
"Whereas Bentham himself regarded the Panopticon as a rational and enlightened, and therefore just, solution to societal problems, his ideas have been repeatedly criticised by others for their reductive, mechanistic and inhumane approach to human lives."
Repeatedly criticized. Definitely! Defended? No, simply applied by those that seek reductive, mechanistic and inhumane approaches to human lives. Criticism appeals to public attention. Stealth evades it. Not just avoids it like avoiding taxes in a tax return where income is stated but excluded for a given reason and anyone can see it. Evading tax by hiding income is illegal.
"Most influentially, the idea of the panopticon was invoked by Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish (1975), as a metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. "On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social 'quarantine', to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of 'panopticism'".[41] The Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power. The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars, chains, and heavy locks are necessary for domination any more.[42] Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the army, schools, hospitals and factories have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it."
Panopticon. What a wonderful word undergoing a metaphoric resurrection.
Use of the word in literature and the arts is described by Wikipedia. This the link again to view its use those areas.
A physical structure has become a conceptual social structure composed of conceptual brick and mortar. Similarly, we are already accustomed to distinguishing internet stores from real world stores by calling the real world stores "brick and mortar stores" Amazon delivers the goods as much as any store that has a door. It just does not have a parking lot except for the employees.
Anti Surveillance Graphic:
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