The panopticon was a design for prisons developed in England by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The image to the left was taken from the Wikipedia article on the panopticon which correctly provides the goal of such prisons: "The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." The goal of such prisons was to minimize the number of guards surveying the prisoners. One guard could see into all the cells and observe what any prisoner was doing at any time. The prisoner would therefore never know if he was being watched or not and thus would come to discipline himself (I will use the masculine as there were no prisons, to the best of my knowledge, build for women using the panopticon design).
Michel Foucault was inspired by the idea of the panopticon in his writings and notably in his writings on crime and punishment. The goal of modernity was to have individuals regulate themselves and they would seek to fit their lives to the larger norms of society.
With modern technology, it is never possible to know who is watching when you are online and the possible consequences of what you have written. One blogger in Russia recently discovered the dangers of expressing one's ideas in Russia.
The online gazeta.ru reported on August 10, 2007, that a musician was arrested in the Komi Republic for a comment that he posted in his blog. The comment (my translation) that raised the ire of police and prosecutors: "Cops and and criminals are one and the same. It would be quite good if corrupt cops were periodically burnt on Stefan's Square [in downtown Syktyvkar]." Here, the blogger does not state that tomorrow or at any time a few police officers should be rounded up and burnt at the stake. Rather, he is using the conditional and this is clearly a hyperbole indicating his frustration with the corruption that he sees as rampant among police officers.
What does this blogger face if convicted? Maximum punishment: a fine of 200,000 rubles and five years in a penal colony. Given that a good wage in Syktyvkar is 10,000 rubles per month, the potential fine is equivalent to two years worth of salary.
The police went to great extremes to connect the accused to the blog. The academic writings of the blogger were seized and academics were called upon to demonstrate that based on the linguistic evidence the blogger and the accused were one and the same individual. A lot of time and effort was clearly put to arrest a blogger for an online rant.
Why is this like the panopticon? Clearly, no state can supervise all bloggers, nor can it listen in to all phone call, because any state will quickly go bankrupt if it tries to supervise all citizens at all times. However, like a prison designed using the idea of the panopticon, it is not necessary to supervise everybody at all times. Rather, all that is necessary is to arrest a few individuals and then make it clear that all could be potentially watched at any time and any could therefore be arrested. This, it is hoped, will be enough to have the citizenry regulate itself. If there is a potential for arrest, then many will simply stay quiet and will refrain from saying what they think, and this will dampen any expressions of free thought. This is what George Orwell had in mind when writing 1984 and it may be time to dust off this old classic...
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