from the 4th issue:
The English prison reformer Jeremy Bentham came up with the idea of the panopticon prison. It’s a architectural design where all inmates can be watched by guards but can’t see the guards and hence don’t know when they are being watched, leading prisoners to self police their activities. The philosopher Foucault took this idea of the panopticon as the arch metaphor of modern power. On many levels this holds true with the northwest becoming a sort of open air prison with cameras on more and more corners and drones soon to become more common place. In tandem with this proliferation of the electronic eyes of the state, government agencies like the NSA and many businesses are vacuuming up and storing as much information as possible, from as many sources as possible, and coupling this info with their ability to use engineering and algorithms to erect a staggering system of monitoring, social sorting, and policing.
At the same time there is a different form of control at play a DIY form of servitude, something neither Bentham, Foucault, Orwell or Kafka foresaw. The pervasiveness of social networking sites (facebook, twitter, vine for example) and cheap cell phones with gps and cameras, have quickly become the basic means of communicating or more precisely “connecting.” Businesses along with new technologies have seduced people into sharing the details of their own lives. They have also capitalized on peoples enjoyment of the vicarious and voyeuristic consumption of others profiles, pictures, and interests. This has effectively turned the panopticon on its head, now the watched become the watchers and at the same time enjoy and desire to be watched. Unlike the cameras on the corner or drones in the air which gather information whether we like it or not, a unheard of amount of information is happily shared online. This “sharing” reveals many are going so far as to reach into the virtual world of the internet to try to form meaningful relationships, most likely in reaction to the lonely, exploited, and alienated lives that are experienced under capitalism and the state. But one thing is sure, that it is difficult to find another such straightforward example of the ruled in voluntary cooperation with their rulers.