The Panopticon, Bentham's big idea, alive and well... Archived Message
Posted by mack on May 6, 2019, 5:38 pm, in reply to "A good companion piece to the Assange article. "Constant surveillance creates a prison of the mind.."
The Panopticon is an architectural concept design for institutional buildings, most commonly associated with prisons. It was developed by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late-18th century as a building that would serve as a system of control. The name was derived from the figure in Greek mythology, Panoptes, who was a giant with a hundred eyes. The form of the panopticon was based around the idea that all the inhabitants (or inmates) of an institution could be monitored by a single central figure (or guard) at all times. While it is impossible for the single figure to observe everyone at once, the idea was that since those under surveillance would not know when they were being observed, they would be incentivised to act as though they were always being observed. https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Panopticon
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