
Panopticon - hardmaru
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
======
keiferski
Even if you disagree with his methods or conclusions, Foucault has some pretty
interesting thoughts and arguments on the panopticon and is somewhat
responsible for revitalizing interest in it in the 1970s.

 _For Foucault, the real danger was not necessarily that individuals are
repressed by the social order but that they are "carefully fabricated in it"
(Foucault, 1977), and because there is a penetration of power into the
behaviour of individuals. (Foucault 1977)._

Kind of chillingly accurate how that is when used to describe social media.

[http://www.moyak.com/papers/michel-foucault-
power.html](http://www.moyak.com/papers/michel-foucault-power.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish)

~~~
paulgerhardt
Whenever I think of the Panopticon I default to Foucault’s metaphorical
embodiment and not Bentham’s literal one.

With Shenzhen’s new 5G/gigapixel systems rolling out in the subway, grocery
stores, cross walks, apartment entries, and even KFC’s I realize both can be
true.

------
mikece
“ The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be
observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell
whether they are being watched.”

Maybe I’m weird but my thoughts immediately go to office design and allowing a
manager to observe any/all employees without them being able to tell. Maybe
THIS is the real point (or at least a “happy” side product) of open-floor-plan
offices?

~~~
parksy
You can see this design pattern in many places. A supermarket chain I once
worked at has the managers office elevated above the store with a one way
mirror, so they can see out and no one can see in. It works. You never know if
the manager is watching. I'm sure it deterred thieves as well as prevented
staff from slacking on the job.

The same concept for years here was used in traffic light cameras, although
they're really commonplace nowadays, in the past the traffic authority only
had a relatively small number of actual cameras, but the camera boxes at
intersections were fixed in place. You would never know if the camera at any
particular time was in there, so everyone slowed down, took their time, and
behaved at those intersections regardless.

Then there are satellites orbiting overhead. Maybe not a concern for you and
I, but real-time, high resolution footage of basically any location on the
planet is at the fingertips of many countries' agencies. You don't know if
anyone's looking at you at any time, but just knowing that up there in the sky
could be hidden eyes watching is a massive deterrent if you're trying to, I
dunno, secretly mobilise an army, or move piles of drugs to a secret
warehouse.

The US government invested a lot of time and money designing blimps that would
be equipped with sensitive radio receivers and gigapixel cameras, that can
float at high altitude virtually invisible to the naked eye while powerful
onboard computers use image recognition to classify and track every moving
object within a city (oddly called ISIS - Integrated Sensor is Structure).

The best part is you don't need to actually build and deploy these things, or
if you do you don't need total coverage, just the very shadow of a threat of
being observed secretly from afar is an really economical approach to getting
large masses of people to fall into line. Knowing that it's possible is enough
to raise the question of whether or not it's already been done.

From a supermarket to space, the panopticon pattern is nested and stacked
under, over and around us in ways that we sometimes barely even recognise or
know exist. Probably not a big issue for the most part if you're not up to
anything nefarious, undoubtedly in many instances it's of benefit to
productivity and society at large. But sometimes governments can turn
nefarious, or you get an asshole boss, and then it becomes a problem for
people.

So yeah I don't think you're weird thinking that open plan offices resemble a
panopticon, though to make it work the boss needs his own side entry and a way
of looking out while no one can look in. Add a loudspeaker so they can yell at
people on the floor if they think they're being slack, and you have a
warehouse I once worked in.

I do seriously doubt many of these workplaces made a conscious decision to
build a panopticon, but it's apparently a natural product of a distrusting,
cunning intellect.

~~~
eskaytwo
Rather tangential, but the band ISIS had an album called Panopticon.

~~~
panopticon
Even more tangential, but that's my namesake.

------
thunderbong
I couldn't figure out how the prisoners were not able to see whether they were
being watched or not. Reading through the article though, it is left as an
open engineering solution.

I found the following bits valuable -

> By Blinds, and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed from the
> observation of the Prisoners

Since this is also tied up with the surveillance society which we seem to be
heading towards, I find the following point very important -

> Bentham's inspection principle applied not only to the inmates of the
> panopticon prison, but also the manager. The unaccountable gaoler was to be
> observed by the general public and public officials. The apparently constant
> surveillance of the prison inmates by the panopticon manager and the
> occasional observation of the manager by the general public

~~~
have_faith
I guess it's more that someone could just lean over and observe you at any
time. You might not see a pair of eyes now, but turn your back and try
something against the rules and a pair of eyes might suddenly appear.

------
kiriliponi
There's a VR game called Panoptic based on the concept, it is worth checking
out. The final version is to be released in a few weeks.

[http://panopticgame.com/](http://panopticgame.com/)

(disclaimer: I know one of the person developing it)

------
amelius
> The metaphor of the panopticon prison has been employed to analyse the
> social significance of surveillance by closed-circuit television (CCTV)
> cameras in public spaces.

Or how about the comparison with Google et al tracking our every move online?

~~~
Udik
Missing the point. The modern panopticon is not Google tracking you, or the
surveillance cameras that only prevent very grave anti-social behaviour.

I propose that the modern panopticon are Facebook and Twitter, where anything
you say, in any conversation and context, stays recorded forever and can be
used against you at a later time- so you may damn well be very careful. And
the irony of it is that the hidden guards are no one else than our collective
selves.

------
prepend
McSweeny’s wrote a funny short story about an office switching to a panopticon
[0].

I find these designs interesting. I used to want to simulate societies in
structures like this. Then I saw stuff like the Real World, and more recently
The Circle on Netflix. I realize that people are very different, and the chaos
of the hoi polloi is not something that interests me in a way that doesn’t bum
me out.

It would be cool to run a Monte Carlo of lots of different combinations until
I find a mix of people who thrive in this kind of situation. Or at least one
where I want to participate.

[0] [https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-open-plan-office-
fai...](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-open-plan-office-failed-so-
were-moving-to-a-towering-panopticon)

------
malux85
Religion is a panopticon for civilizations who aren't technologically advanced
enough to run surveillance by machine intelligence

~~~
Bartweiss
This gets at something significant, but I think there's a sense in which it's
backwards.

Religion promises to surveil you _all the time_. This stretches far beyond any
one faith: the Abrahamic God is omniscient, karma is a direct consequence of
each action, Anubis measures the whole of your life by the weight of your
heart. Even Santa Claus, who is absolutely a religious figure to children,
"sees you when you're sleeping" and "knows when you're awake".

Panopticon relies on the _threat_ of surveillance. You could be surveilled at
any moment without knowing it, resulting in constant self-consciousness. This
is the logic of security cameras and secret police. If Santa corresponds to a
god, panopticon is more like Elf on a Shelf. That's not just anecdotal, it's
made very clear when a kid does breaks a rule behind a closed door because
"then the elf can't see me".

The claim made by religion is far bolder. You might commit or witness an
unpunished crime and realize that it's possible to misbehave without
judgement, but you can't sin sneakily or find an example of someone getting
away with sin unpunished. However, religion's claim isn't necessarily more
coercive. Panopticon threatens arbitrary judgement. You might commit a venial
sin and trust that a life of piety will outweigh it, but panopticon judges you
on arbitrary moments. Even a minor, widely committed crime like speeding
carries some risk of a harsh punishment.

( _Calvin and Hobbes_ , of all things, takes this on quite insightfully.
Calvin theorizes Santa relies on panopticon rather than omniscience, and
changes his plans accordingly:
[https://imgur.com/VUhe8vG.](https://imgur.com/VUhe8vG.))

Social media is a panopticon, recreating patterns we used to associate with
inquisitors and town gossips. (What would Mrs. Grundy say - if she happened to
find out?) Mostly, no one's watching closely, and unless someone actively
documents what you say it can be deleted later. But anyone tweeting an
offensive joke _might_ get cancelled, regardless of their good works, if
someone happens to notice.

Data processing is, or soon will be, religion made manifest. A sufficient
power can surveil everyone at once, weigh up all their deeds, and choose who
to punish. And full-take storage means the end of safety; what's recorded and
found blameless today can be evaluated again in 10 or 50 years under different
rules. That's pretty much unprecedented, and I don't think we've grappled with
the implications.

------
Waterluvian
The problem with this, which I learned about in grade school with bullies, is
that it works only if the people are rational actors. If they don't understand
the principles at work or don't care, the whole thing falls apart. You just
need inmates who roll the dice or don't care, or bullies who cannot
contemplate mutually assured destruction and your strategy completely falls
apart.

~~~
itronitron
_Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid
individuals in circulation._

[https://www.academia.edu/11274021/Cipolla_-
The_Basic_Laws_of...](https://www.academia.edu/11274021/Cipolla_-
The_Basic_Laws_of_Human_Stupidity)

~~~
dredmorbius
Direct download: [http://www.academia.edu/download/36859613/Cipolla_-
The_Basic...](http://www.academia.edu/download/36859613/Cipolla_-
The_Basic_Laws_of_Human_Stupidity.pdf)

------
hyfgfh
Did I hear Office Concept?

------
Toenex
Isn't this how some public transport works (at least in the UK)? There's only
a limited number of inspectors on the trams in Manchester so I probably won't
get stopped but I don't know where they will be. I think the outcome is that
the punishment has to be significant enough otherwise people work the
probabilities.

(Note I always buy a ticket because I can afford it and want successful public
transport.)

~~~
xallace
or any Mass surveillance state like North Korea, China, Stalin-era Soviet
Union, DDR (East Germany)

they had limited resources but high enough punishment to keep the population
in check

~~~
gerikson
The DDR spent considerable resources on internal security.

The Stasi museum in Berlin is well worth a visit. After the Helsinki agreement
to limit physical abuse, prisoners were subjected to psychological isolation
instead.

Some Stasi jailers wrote academical treastises on how to handle enemies of the
state.

------
cyberferret
I always associate this word first and foremost with the device in Asimov's
short story sequel to "Marooned off Vesta".

EDIT: Oops, in the story it was "anoptikon" which was a play on the
misunderstanding in the first story that the company was talking about "an
optikon" when referring to the device.

------
silence_tool
In my country we have a jail with this design, it's weird when you notice the
similitude.

[https://goo.gl/maps/xZcMWFsin3p6W6u68](https://goo.gl/maps/xZcMWFsin3p6W6u68)
(use the satellite view)

------
Keloran
I thought this was going to be related to the sculptures in Lancashire

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticons)

------
ajxs
A while ago I registered a very corny vanity domain:
[http://panoptic.online/](http://panoptic.online/)

I'll see myself out.

------
basilamer
Was playing the game Control last night and got to a mission/area called
Panopticon. I thought "huh what a cool made-up word". Cool to know this a real
thing.

------
rubyn00bie
Obligatory (IMHO):
[https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/fou...](https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/foucault-
panopticism.pdf)

I don't know how you can even begin to talk about the Panopticon without
mentioning Foucault.

