Digital Panopticons
Foucault’s ideas about panopticons have parallels in the structure and experience of cyberspace. Its concerns with scopic
regimes and the dissymmetric flow of power between the subject of the gaze and its object can be seen to operate within this
space.
The panopticon is an architectural system of observation and control invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1787, by which many inmates
within the system could be surveyed by a single person. The effect that this had was that the inmate could never know for
sure if they were being singled out for observation, but must always assume that they were.
Thus the inmates themselves became the ‘bearers of power’ and in a state of ‘conscious and permanent visibility that assures
the automatic functioning of power.’
Foucault saw in the panopticon a metaphor for the paradigm of ocular control present within modern society, saying ‘our society
is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance, …we are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine’.
Members of a society are aware of their contemporaries and authority institutions, monitoring their behaviour for ‘abnormal’
or dangerous habits. Today more than ever such observational tactics are engaged with on an everyday basis, from supermarket
loyalty cards which log your every purchase, to the ubiquitous CCTV in city centres which can track a persons movements almost
without a break. There are even satellites in orbit above our heads that can read car number- plates or the headlines of newspapers.
Such close and total observation encourages conformity and self-regulation, as any deviant practice is sure to attract attention.
Foucault argued that such power relations were everywhere, subjecting everyone to ‘a faceless gaze that transformed the whole
social body into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posted everywhere…’
The Internet performs many of these power functions. Every time one enters cyberspace ones computer identifies itself at every
connection and destination. This is recorded at both the points of departure and arrival. E-mails are insecure and can be
monitored. Every journey in cyberspace leaves electronic footprints in the data flow, enabling others to discern ones tastes,
interests and sympathies, building an ever growing personal, political and consumer profile along the way. Microprocessors
have been recruited into the systems of micro powers, providing the means by which the many users of the Internet can be observed
by the few who provide and control access to it.
However, cyberspace has the ability to function as a much more complex information and power system, in which the dissymmetrical
distribution of power between the observer and the observed is to some extent brought closer to equilibrium, and the very
distinctions between the two begin to blur.
In the original panopticon, one is the ‘object of information, never a subject in communication’, whereas the Internet provides
an instantaneous and far reaching form of communication and information gathering, and although information on net usage is
constantly gathered and stored, the flow is no longer only away from the object. They too have access to a wide range of information,
even to the extent of learning about their observers.
A Private Panopticon
Although one is always visible in cyberspace, one is also metaphorically sited within the observation tower of ones own private
panopticon, able to view vast amounts of information from all over the world across the panoramic vista of cyberspace.
Though the power of invisible observation is not as absolute as in the original, the panoptic regime is in some way inverted,
and power is rested away from those who traditionally hold it absolutely. Such potentially benign qualities have always been
present in the design of the panopticon, although admittedly buried deep within the desire for oppressive observation and
social control and conformity. Foucault wrote ‘its aim is to strengthen the social forces – to increase production, to develop
the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply’ and amongst these largely manipulative
aims only education is not totally a form of social control, having as it does the potential for self-improvement and free
thinking.
Such opportunities for intellectual and humanist advancement are also present for those that would operate, rather than be
objects of the panoptic system. Bentham himself said that any individual, ‘taken almost at random, can operate the machine’
and their motives for doing so can be equally diverse, just as the person who accesses the Internet can do so for any number
of reasons:
the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this
museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing.
From this, I hope it can be seen that there are similarities between the original, penal panopticon, and the observational
qualities inherent in entering cyberspace. The Internet can be seen to be constituted from millions of individual panopticons,
each observing the many (consensually), and being monitored at the same time, without consent by the few. The inversion of
received notions of power, access to information and control that can be experienced on the Internet (to whatever degree),
are an important facet of this space, and are perhaps amongst the reasons for its increasing popularity.
Although perhaps obviously relevant to the viewing of art, when one considers the often considerable sub-texts involved in
the housing of and access to objects of supposedly ‘high culture’ (manifested in the creation, architecture and ambience of
traditional, High Victorian art galleries), the freedom to cast off such conditions and view art in a less socially mediated
and controlled environment can be seen to be a valuable opportunity for both artists and viewers. Perhaps it is only fitting
that the Internet should not completely reverse the panoptic regime, for as Foucault said: ‘Men have dreamed of liberating
machines. But there are no machines of freedom, by definition.’
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