Counterpunch argues that the Facebook phenomenon is pretty much Bentham’s panopticon made real:
Facebook has ushered in a revolution, and a failed one at that. It is much like the panopticon – ‘all-seeing’, that surveillance device the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham pioneered in the nineteenth century for penal reform. Zuckerman shares more with Bentham than he realises: a desire to improve the quotient of pleasure in society; a desire to maximise the network for the common good. As Bentham commences his study on penal reform, he calls his device the panopticon ‘or the inspection house’.
The author, Binoy Kampmark, a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, UK, goes on:
In 1975, Michel Foucault added his gloss to Bentham’s Panopticon Notes. For Foucault, the major effect of the Panopticon is: ‘to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ The prison inmate ‘is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.’
There are subtle differences. Members of the networks have become inspectors, just as they have become prisoners. People do ‘communicate’ with each other. It is a brilliant seduction: to give the means of surveillance to everybody in order to legitimise it. We see but we are also seen (at stages). We relinquish ourselves to others, but have the luxury of indulging in everyone else’s surrender of secrecy.
Personally I don’t buy it. Sure there are surveillant qualities but it is largely voluntary. And it is not new. When I was a grad student in the 1980s, I had a little script running on the VM mainframe computer that allowed me to see when any of my friends logged on. then I would send them a little “IM,” often startling and disconcerting them.
Today, we are used to far more. What could Facebook tell you anyway? Facebook is really part of something larger, the surveillant society/mentality which believes in trading surveillance for security. That’s the real issue.
…adding that clearly someone else has thought about this way more deeply than I have:
Filed under: Panopticon
I wonder if this could be tied into the ideda of docile bodies – that facebook’s (and other such apps) great skill is in convincing people to surveill themselves and marketing is as something pleasurable, enabling, productive.
Yes, I think you are right. One of the central points with the Panopticon according to Foucault is that it is asymmetrical. This is not true for Facebook and similar social networks. The same capacity to watch is given to everyone, thus it is symmetrical.
You are also in a position where you can choose who has the ability to watch and follow your actions (by granting or not granting someone as a friend) even if you choose to participate.
Also, Facebook, as far as i can see, doesn’t involve any obvious power relations, like that between guard and prisoner, the teacher and his pupil or a supervisor and his workers.
“doesn’t involve any obvious power relations”
Surely these could be developed over time though…
One crucial difference between Facebook and the Panopticon is that Facebook gives its users control over what and how much information they want to share, including the ability to opt back out by deleting their entire account.
I find it useful to dwell on the brouhaha that emerged a while back when Facebook added its news feed function. Facebook users felt that this feature was too intrusive, especially since they had no way to control what information showed up in the feed. I think this shows both that Facebook is not quite a Panopticon, and that Facebook users are sensitive to the ways in which Facebook might approach being a Panopticon.
We will continue to struggle with what we hide from others and what we make visible (see Goffman), and new technologies certainly give rise to new dangers, but we should be careful with our analyses and resist jumping to conclusions.
Drew, power relationships could indeed develop over time, but that is a progression anticipated by Foucault’s conceiving of the elements of power, one of which is relationships of communication. These may have as their cause and/or effect relationships of power but it doesn’t necessarily follow that a relationship of communication will become a relationship of power.
What about the owner of facebook?
Whoever that person/institution should have all the database.
I think that person could act as master of panopticon.
The surveillance is surely asymmetrical in this sense.
I think Foucault would say that power relationships exist already…there’s no need to wait for them to develop, since all relationships are inherently relationships of power anyhow. As for deleting your account, that’s actually not totally up to you…you have to go through a lot of hoops to get it fully deleted…it’s Facebook’s property. The require your legal name, which links all info you post far beyond a social networking device. Power is given to boyfriends/girlfriends (harder to have an affair/one-night stand when your relationship info is posted), future employers, school administrations, and even the police. Recently at my college, police used Facebook to look at pictures of friends of an individual who had been caught smoking pot in the dorms. Two students had run, but they were identified and arrested by using the photos. Regardless of whether you think these are positive or negative uses of power, I think it’s undeniable that Facebook is shot through with individualizing, particular information which gives power to other people. No one needs to be in control of it.