-- AllysonChavez - 06 Sep 2023

(this is very much a work in progress but I wanted to challenge the idea of attention and submit an imperfect thought rather than "leave it for later" because the machine demands my attention)

The panopticon comes to mind because “[i]t is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.” Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish:The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Print., chapter 3

The internet functions as a wireless panopticon that seeks to isolate and observe individuals for data aggregation. The internet as a panopticon seems to find its power in a concerted distribution of data rather than that of bodies -- the internet as a panopticon has an additional function: data aggregation. As Professor Moglen notes in his Republica talk “our relationship to the network is that we behave for it. Its sustenance is our behavior, and the network itself makes us engage in more human behavior. It's a self-sustaining mechanism that chemically alters who we are.”

The way the network works even mirrors the original panopticon. Click here to see how networks work (even though the images are wired, it works the same for wireless networks.

now see Bentham's panopticon as drawn by Willey Reveley

how does this connect to discipline and punishment? when states have access to sensitive data, they can use that to track behavior. Pro-choice states can track period app data to monitor girls menstrual cycles to ensure they are not getting abortions. See [[A new study shows many period and fertility tracking apps aren’t clear about what user data they would share with law enforcement, raising concerns the information could be used to prosecute people in states where abortion is banned.[link text]] link text