It's been a long week and though that serves as no excuse for this post being days late, it is nice to get it out on this page as I describe in further detail my next foray into the world described in The Electronic Eye. David Lyon left the reader at the end of the first 50 pages of this book with a description of surveillance growth over history. Now, in his chapter entitled "From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon, he describes the differences from feeling like "Big Brother is watching you" to the reality of how much social control comes with the gathering of data, the loss of privacy, and the transparency of individuals in society. Forwarding his analysis of data gathering he sites a prison plan from Britain in the 1790's. This prison was entitles the Panopticon penitentiary and was designed to be a form of prison rooting itself in a design that made all prisoners visible to the guards, but the guards invisible to the inmates, giving them the specific sense that, as Lyon puts it, like God, there are a set of invisible eyes watching them. In describing this, Lyon goes on to reveal that surveillance can be best described as the "accumulation of coded information" and that it refers to the "direct monitoring of subordinates within the capitalist workplace," usually without those subordinates knowing someone is watching their every move. But as Lyon's reveals, everywhere from the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) to the FBI and CIA are constantly gathering data on us whether we are suspect or not. This information can be harmless, such as driver's liscences and policitcal information, but as Lyon says, it does enclose us in a type of "electronic Panopticon." He also makes references in this chapter to George Orwell's book 1984, which describes a dystopia, a society in which, as the term goes, "Big Brother is always watching." And Lyon's key point here is that as technology increases, these metaphors for contemporary surveillance, though not descriptive of the entire problem, become more and more accurate.
I recall reading about the panopticon idea in college. I wonder if we really experience the world this way, though. How many of us feel that we are being watched? For these systems (video cameras, for example) to work, we do need to feel this way...but do we? I wonder how you find this out. It's almost as if the panoticon has slipped in and we've not been made aware of it--which would defeat the purpose of the panoticon, no?
ReplyDeleteSee if you can find out if all of this surveillance has made any difference.
Assignment complete but a bit late = 10/15