Inverted panopticon

Back in the late 18th century, Jeremy Bentham was trying to devise a prison that would ensure the maximum degree of order among its inmates. He suggested that the most order could be had if the inmates were under constant surveillance. That not being especially practical, second best would be when the inmates thought they were under surveillance at all times or at least they might be. So, he proposed an architectural solution he called the Panopticon. It was essentially a doughnut where the inmates were all in backlit cells with big windows facing the center. In the center was an observation tower where the guard could see into the cells but the inmate couldn't tell whether he was being observed at a given time.

Focault describes the Panopticon this way:

“The crowd... a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised; from the point of view of the inmates, by a sequestered and observed solitude.”

and

'Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.

The Stanford Prison experiments (by Zimbardo) is a good example of a psychological expriment that shows us what panopticon does to the human mind. There was made a movie out of this , called the experiment or something like that, if anyone is interrested in an easily digestable and well made filmatisation of this. The bound to be opposition of master and slave. This experiment and movie is a disturbing glance into the human psyche - how normal people are affected by enclosed and specific situations - how the captor becomes brutal and bizarre and the captive becomes reclusive, introverted and with a great feeling of powerlessness. When we look at alot of society and they way it is heading, towards this ban everything , report everything, fear everything and the big eye in the sky, ivory tower, big brother who could be watching you from a sattelite spy cam or from the house across the road. But this is not because of some inherant evil, or some evil brought on by living in great groups.. We did it .. to ourselves .. not them .. not they .. but we .. you .. I .. i .. and only we can change it.