Task 1

The panopticon was a 18th Century prison where the cells circled a watch tower so that the illusion of surveillance was ever present, this encouraged self regulation and resulted in the prisoners 'guarding' themselves. This theory, panopticism, was used to build prisons, hospitals and schools and was designed by English theorist Jeremy Bentham. This philosophy can and is applied to certain cultures and aspects in modern society.


In the digital age practically everything we do is tracked, monitored or watched, or so we believe. The internet has opened a huge portal into information an knowledge, allowing people to discover anything they want. However, these searches on the internet are logged and every computer and internet connection has an IP address. In relation to Foucault's Panopticism an IP address could be related to the window or barred gate of a prison cell, the entrance whereby activities can be viewed and monitored. A user can therefore be 'googling' a topic or subject and that information is documented under the IP address of that User and this recording can be viewed by the Broadband provider, Police organisation and appropriate Government regulators, but the user is not aware of the viewer. "He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication" The user also never knows who is monitoring their activity, "one sees everything without ever being seen".

This surveillance is set in place due to laws and known online criminal activity, but it also acts as a panopticon and a deterrent to curiosity and keeps the majority of online users in check because they know of the surveillance but they don't know if or when it ceases, "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 user will consciously behave online and they will purposefully example their behaviour in comments to message boards or on videos and articles, some will even replace swear words with asterixs to be polite. "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".

It would be naive to presume that all internet users behaved, but the ones that don't are quickly punished or caught and are examples of reliability and sight of the 'guardian'