ekcoll

Panopticon: The panopticon is a design concept for a type of institutional building introduced by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The core idea is that a single watchman can observe all the inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. The architectural structure consists of a circular building with an observation tower in the center, from which an observer can see every inmate, but the inmates cannot see into the tower. This uncertainty, Bentham believed, would be a powerful tool of control because the inmates, not knowing if they were being watched, would behave as if they were always under surveillance. The Internet as Panopticon: The analogy between the panopticon and the internet revolves around the concept of surveillance: Ubiquitous Surveillance: Just as the panopticon enables continuous surveillance of inmates, the internet can be used as a tool for widespread monitoring o...