Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie teas Julie listeners.
Speaker 1: Imagine a vast circular prison. Okay, you with me, yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: Now you step inside, and you'll find a curious arrangement
Speaker 1: of the cells. Because most of this enclosed face is
Speaker 1: exactly bad. It's empty space. The quicle cells line the
Speaker 1: circumference of the inner walls. Uh, several stories worth in
Speaker 1: fact in their bars, all face inward toward a lone
Speaker 1: guard tower known as the Inspector's Lodge. Okay, Now, standing
Speaker 1: within your prison cell, you can't see any of your
Speaker 1: fellow cell mates, can't see any of the other cells.
Speaker 1: All you can see is this tower, and you can't
Speaker 1: see the inspector, that supposedly man's it due to a
Speaker 1: mesh screen. But you know he's there. You know he's watching. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know he's referencing a detailed map of which prisoner
Speaker 1: occupies which cell, and you know that he listens in
Speaker 1: as well. But of course, the inspector can only look
Speaker 1: or listen to one cell at any given moment, right,
Speaker 1: but you never know if his attention is turned to you,
Speaker 1: so you have to assume at all times that he
Speaker 1: might be listening to you. You have to avoid that
Speaker 1: type to error and cognition. It's the only way to
Speaker 1: deal with the endless uncertainty. It's safer to assume, right.
Speaker 1: And besides that, you know that prisoners are regularly moved
Speaker 1: to new cells based on good or bad behavior. So
Speaker 1: I see that you have had a look inside my house.
Speaker 1: Oh is this how you have your house arranged? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you're the inspector. What makes it really easy to
Speaker 1: keep tabs on everybody? Yeah? So I think what you
Speaker 1: have just described as something called the panopticon. Yes, And
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this today. We're going to
Speaker 1: look at how spaces can have the power to liberate,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about before with labyrinths, or they have
Speaker 1: the power to oppress. And when you think about prison
Speaker 1: and you think about prisoners, you think about anxiety, loneliness,
Speaker 1: in vulnerability, and so this panopticon is really this idea
Speaker 1: of these concentric circles closing in on us. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: what's great about it is that it's not only this
Speaker 1: this wonderful and then disturbing to varying levels design for
Speaker 1: how we might use a physical space to have this
Speaker 1: drastic effect on the human mind. But it also over
Speaker 1: the years has been picked up as a philosophical idea,
Speaker 1: as a metaphor that we apply to government, to internet culture,
Speaker 1: you name it. I mean, you do a search for panopticon,
Speaker 1: you will find people using it just about every uh
Speaker 1: way they possibly can to criticize a given system of order, government, bureaucracy, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: probably one of the oldest ways in which it's been
Speaker 1: linked is this metaphor of the seeing eye of God, right,
Speaker 1: particularly in Western culture, because when you're indoctrinated into Western culture,
Speaker 1: you're indoctrinated this idea that there's this uh, this powerful
Speaker 1: gaze and this powerful memory of a deity looking over
Speaker 1: all of us. Yeah, he knows what you've been doing
Speaker 1: when you're awake. Yeah, Santa Claus and God kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of share the same space and in the
Speaker 1: Western mindset, and and you're right to to to your point,
Speaker 1: the idea of the inspector and the Inspector's lodge and
Speaker 1: that tower at the center of the Penoptacon is very
Speaker 1: much the idea of a god, but a but a
Speaker 1: very uh, non personal god, a god that's all up
Speaker 1: in your business. But also you have you have no
Speaker 1: real clue as to what they look like, what they are,
Speaker 1: what their their their ideas are regarding your fate in
Speaker 1: this strange, strangely ordered prison. Well, this is a vengeful God.
Speaker 1: And um, this is something that you know what came
Speaker 1: out of the mind of a English utilitarian philosopher by
Speaker 1: the name of Jeremy Bentham, who unveiled this architectural marvel,
Speaker 1: these plans for this panoptic into the world. So as
Speaker 1: you said, you know, let's revisit that again that we're
Speaker 1: talking about two sets of concentric towers within the other,
Speaker 1: with cells lining the outer wall, being visible to and
Speaker 1: subject to regulation from the watcher the eye of God.
Speaker 1: And those people they would live, they would eat, they
Speaker 1: would sleep and work in these cells and what they
Speaker 1: thought was constant surveillance. Now give you a little background
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham with the eighteen thirty two again. He's a
Speaker 1: British philosopher and and something of a political radical. He's
Speaker 1: mainly known for the philosophy of utilitarianism, which elevates actions
Speaker 1: based on their relevant consequences to the overall happiness of
Speaker 1: everyone affected. And he had something of a hedonistic approach
Speaker 1: to happiness, defining its simply as a matter of experiencing
Speaker 1: pleasure and a lack of pain. Um. Now, when it
Speaker 1: comes to his uh popticon, uh he, his approach to
Speaker 1: it was, this is an overall good idea. He wasn't saying,
Speaker 1: I have a great humanity crushing concept. I want to
Speaker 1: they all in the world, you know, he was saying, Look,
Speaker 1: prisons are a mess. We're in this. We're in the
Speaker 1: midst of of of overall attempts to form our prisons
Speaker 1: and make them more effective and make them less horrifying.
Speaker 1: So here's one way we can do it, and we
Speaker 1: can make it more cost effective and overall just more
Speaker 1: effective as well. Because if you have a couple of
Speaker 1: guards in a central tower watching over everyone, then you
Speaker 1: don't have guards that are going, you know, on the
Speaker 1: beat to every single cell and looking over right, so
Speaker 1: you have less manpower that actually has to enforce this
Speaker 1: feeling that you're being surveiled. Yeah, you end up with
Speaker 1: four guards that you're to only two of which are
Speaker 1: actually paid because you have the two guys, you know,
Speaker 1: one guy maybe walking around. You have one guy in
Speaker 1: the tower, and then you have fear and uncertainty, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay for those because those guys
Speaker 1: are are are summoned out of the very physicality of
Speaker 1: the structure. Yeah, and it's actually compounded that this this
Speaker 1: this fear by this idea of having those cells being illuminated,
Speaker 1: but the observation tower actually being dark, so that the
Speaker 1: prisoners could be observed all the time. They wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to tell when they were being observed, and so
Speaker 1: the goal is for them to learn to act as
Speaker 1: if they were constantly under surveillance. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that once this uh, I guess you could call it
Speaker 1: self discipline was instilled, that prisoners could be released into
Speaker 1: society with the capacity to regulate their own behavior through paranoia.
Speaker 1: Really and yeah and benthem, I mean he's not again,
Speaker 1: he's not trying to be dastardly about this. He's sort
Speaker 1: of thinking, this is the way that we can uh
Speaker 1: manage the prison problem and reform the prisoner via paranoia exactly.
Speaker 1: So originally he thought about this as a prison design,
Speaker 1: but he also thought it was quote applicable to any
Speaker 1: sort of establishment in which persons of any description are
Speaker 1: to be kept under inspection. So we're talking about insane
Speaker 1: asylums for houses. But this is where it gets into society. Factories, schools,
Speaker 1: and hospitals. Yeah, I mean, without without getting into the
Speaker 1: fine details of it, you can see where that would
Speaker 1: that would make sense, and say a hospital where you
Speaker 1: you want constant surveillance more or less of people's conditions,
Speaker 1: or at the very least you want people to feel
Speaker 1: like they're under constant care and surveillance, So that would
Speaker 1: make sense. And obviously with the school situation, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it feels like a school is very similar to a
Speaker 1: prisoner insane asylum, and you have to have that kind
Speaker 1: of order in place to make sure that everyone's doing
Speaker 1: right and and obeying their the laws of the school,
Speaker 1: not cheating on every test, not skipping classes. The problem
Speaker 1: with us and we'll get more into this, uh in
Speaker 1: a bit, is this inherent distrust right? Because Okay, you
Speaker 1: see it extended to prisons, but factories, schools, and hospitals.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily just taking the form of hey, we're
Speaker 1: just going to surveil and make sure everything is okay.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that something is wrong. Someone somewhere is
Speaker 1: doing something wrong. Right, Yeah, the whole system ends up
Speaker 1: being predicated on guilt, and and it's him to Guildea.
Speaker 1: All right, So what you're you're you're probably asking yourself.
Speaker 1: You're saying, all right, well, where's the panopticon? Point to
Speaker 1: the pen opticon, so I might see a picture of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And certainly there's some wonderful sketches of it, because I've
Speaker 1: been to put a lot of thought and effort into
Speaker 1: the designs. He worked with an architect. He was even
Speaker 1: taught in talks to see his design implemented at one point.
Speaker 1: But the Penopticon was never built in his lifetime. In fact,
Speaker 1: no true panopticon prison was ever built another and no
Speaker 1: one ever took his designs and said all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna build this this thing that he designed. Part of
Speaker 1: the problem here is that by the time surveillance technology
Speaker 1: really caught up with his vision, you no longer need
Speaker 1: that specific architecture to make it happen. Like once you
Speaker 1: can actually wire every prison cell conceivably with video and audio.
Speaker 1: If you've reached the point where you can do that,
Speaker 1: you don't need this giant space with all this wasted
Speaker 1: empty space between the cells and the tower. You can
Speaker 1: just build a big, you know, farm of cubes and
Speaker 1: then just wire it up right. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: is a huge cost, and politicians were interested, but they
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily going to implement it. Yeah, and we see
Speaker 1: this all the time even today. You know, you're always
Speaker 1: finding stuff showing up in your your feed, your news feed,
Speaker 1: or your Facebook feed where it's like some crazy design
Speaker 1: that's going to innovate the way that we travel or
Speaker 1: do business or live. And for the most part, you're
Speaker 1: not going to see those designs implemented. Those represent the
Speaker 1: extreme that under the best of situations will um you'll
Speaker 1: see aspects of that implemented further down the chain, or
Speaker 1: at least will draw um inspiration and innovation in that direction. Right.
Speaker 1: But so it was never truly built, but it's still
Speaker 1: influenced other prisons. Yes, And probably the best example that
Speaker 1: we can we can find for this is a Cuba's
Speaker 1: UH Presidio MODELO and this was built between n and
Speaker 1: nine and it actually consists of five panopticon buildings, each
Speaker 1: designed to hold prisoners. So these are five buildings UH
Speaker 1: cells lining the inside of the the outer walls, and
Speaker 1: then there's a tower in the center where the guards
Speaker 1: would be able to watch everyone. And uh, you know it,
Speaker 1: it operated, it was functional, and you actually saw some
Speaker 1: some star prisoners there. I Fidel Castro was a prisoner
Speaker 1: there during the rebellion and uh, but of course, then
Speaker 1: after his rise to power, you see the thing just
Speaker 1: stuffed with political prisoners, um, homosexuals, Jeovah's witnesses, counter revolutionaries,
Speaker 1: various enemies of the state, and so the population quickly
Speaker 1: skyrockets to six thousand inmates. Now, of course, that's the
Speaker 1: thing about prisons. If they're built to contain a certain
Speaker 1: number of people. Um, if you overstuffed them, you're gonna
Speaker 1: overload any system, You're gonna overload the wiring of the prison.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened, you that you have overcrowding
Speaker 1: at least riots in nineteen sixty one, and then it
Speaker 1: was permanently closed by the government in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: Today it's a museum and I think there's a school
Speaker 1: there and also some some offices. But for the most
Speaker 1: part you can you can still find pictures of this
Speaker 1: online and and you can visit it if you're in Cuba,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's really remarkable to look at because
Speaker 1: is it's the idea of the panopticon brought to physical life.
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out a quote by Architects, Designers
Speaker 1: Planners for Social Responsibility that's a d p s R.
Speaker 1: There is an essay on this about prisons and panopticon,
Speaker 1: and the quote is the best intention. Reformist designs have
Speaker 1: believed that more complete control of prisoners through design would
Speaker 1: be used only to further higher goals such as religious
Speaker 1: awakenings and in a reflection, but in fact control is
Speaker 1: an end in itself, and prisons just recreate the powerlessness
Speaker 1: of the member of poor and oppressed groups under even
Speaker 1: stricter rules than they face on the outside. That was
Speaker 1: something interesting to ponder just in general. Not you know,
Speaker 1: the panopticon is really this idealized version of power and control.
Speaker 1: But the prison system as it exists right now, Um,
Speaker 1: there are many people who would say that it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: it doesn't reform. I agree, I agree, And that's that's
Speaker 1: definitely a subject for another episode. We could do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on the state of prisons and and the
Speaker 1: mindset that goes into prison designs. Overall and just let
Speaker 1: the philosophy that goes into an house change over time. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we are going to look more at this panopticon from
Speaker 1: the perspective of Michelle fel Cole. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So yes, Uh, that's the best example of the panopticon
Speaker 1: physically that we have. And you do see uh panopticonic
Speaker 1: elements incorporated into various other prison designs. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, where panopticon continues to have the most power
Speaker 1: today is as metaphor. That's right. And uh, that's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up that quote by the A. D.
Speaker 1: Spr because Michelle Fockle is a French philosopher who brought
Speaker 1: up the panopticon as this idea of a metaphor of
Speaker 1: our society. That disciplinary systems are prisons in particular, with
Speaker 1: a panopticon is the ideal type there they can be
Speaker 1: social failures. Yeah, fo Call's picture of modern disciplinary society
Speaker 1: breaks into three primary techniques that governmental powers used to
Speaker 1: control the masses. That's hierarchical observation, normalizing, judgment, and examination.
Speaker 1: Now and where this panopticon enters into all that is
Speaker 1: that according to focal power over people can can be
Speaker 1: achieved merely by observing them. So it's like with the panopticon.
Speaker 1: But the deal is that a single inspector would be impossible, right,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about governmental power, So you need
Speaker 1: relays of inspectors. You need all of them arrange in
Speaker 1: a hierarchy so that data can pass up and down
Speaker 1: the chain based on importance. And in all of this
Speaker 1: fool focusing on society's modern transition from a quote culture
Speaker 1: of spectacle to make our sero or prison culture. Now
Speaker 1: this gets into the idea that what happened when you
Speaker 1: broke the law in the old days, and like really
Speaker 1: broke it, like broke it hard, you would be made
Speaker 1: spectacle of right, And that's what he says. He says
Speaker 1: that this is a quote for him. By the effect
Speaker 1: of backlighting, one can observe from the tower standing out
Speaker 1: precisely against the light, the small captive shadows, and the
Speaker 1: cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages,
Speaker 1: so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone,
Speaker 1: perfectly individualized and constantly visible. So he's saying that this
Speaker 1: stage that the has been reversed, that the audience is
Speaker 1: now in the cells, and the actor, the performer, is
Speaker 1: that that watch person looking over everybody else, and it
Speaker 1: still remains too spectacle. Really, Yeah, a reversal of the
Speaker 1: old days where everyone will be gathered around the guillotine
Speaker 1: or the heads of his block, or the or the
Speaker 1: news or what have you. So, yeah, and within those
Speaker 1: three points that you had made, the hierarchical distribution of information,
Speaker 1: examination of the information, but also normalizing. This is a
Speaker 1: really important aspect of this, and this is what a
Speaker 1: lot of people run with when they look at our
Speaker 1: society today, look at the different ways that panopticon can
Speaker 1: exist in different formats. So what call has to say
Speaker 1: about normalizing, he says, Hence the major effect of the
Speaker 1: panopticon to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
Speaker 1: and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
Speaker 1: So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in
Speaker 1: its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action. Again,
Speaker 1: this is sort of going back to what Bentham was
Speaker 1: really saying, is trying to instill that paranoia that you're
Speaker 1: being watched even if you're not being watched. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: might be watching me. So therefore there's this always feeling,
Speaker 1: there's always this feeling that kind of evens out that
Speaker 1: they are watching me. Yeah, and I'll just skip ahead.
Speaker 1: In this quote, he says, in short, that the inmates
Speaker 1: should be caught up in a power situation of which
Speaker 1: they are themselves the bearer. So they are the bearer
Speaker 1: of this, and it's this normalization of always being under
Speaker 1: the gaze. And this is what call had a problem
Speaker 1: with because he said that again, it's not just limited
Speaker 1: to prison design. It's a meta for for all types
Speaker 1: of different social organizations and structure, schools, factories, and governments
Speaker 1: now perdue universities. Dino Feluga breaks down the effects of
Speaker 1: pen optic organizational models into into seven overall effects, and
Speaker 1: I think these are pretty interesting. This again is his
Speaker 1: view and his commentary on focals philosophy. Number One, society
Speaker 1: becomes less willing to contest unjust laws, like everyone's under
Speaker 1: the gaze of the observer, and so therefore, even if
Speaker 1: the law seemed to becoming becoming unjust, you're less likely
Speaker 1: to speak out of them, because the gaze is in
Speaker 1: theory on everyone uh. Number two, rehabilitation rather than crueler
Speaker 1: and unusual punishment. So again we talked about that it
Speaker 1: becomes more about the prison system rather than the spectacle. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's birth of an information society. You become more
Speaker 1: and more dependent on technology and record keeping. Uh. You
Speaker 1: have a bureaucracy of information in which people become numbers
Speaker 1: because again you're having to keep track of everybody and
Speaker 1: keep track of everything. And this is the panoptic system.
Speaker 1: Efficiency becomes more and more important, even at the cost
Speaker 1: of exploitation or injustice. And finally, a specialization. Members of
Speaker 1: the workforce are organized into increasingly specialized fields so that
Speaker 1: we increasingly rely on other experts to complete tasks that
Speaker 1: had previously been shared or common knowledge, so that you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking to the preparation of meats and other food products, building, construction, transportation, etcetera.
Speaker 1: His idea here is that with the panopticon, it kind
Speaker 1: of breeds bureaucracy, and bureau bureaucracy is the uh is
Speaker 1: the brick and mortar of the governmental Uh penopticon to
Speaker 1: power panopticon. Uh, that that is society. Yeah, and these
Speaker 1: these unwritten rules, UM, and this idea that you're being surveiled,
Speaker 1: this idea that it's all normal. Right, you can start
Speaker 1: to look around and as people have done, particularly at
Speaker 1: the drone situation, and say, okay, so what about the
Speaker 1: pentopticon and modern society. We'll start to think about how
Speaker 1: the Pentagon has scores of communication satellites, many of them
Speaker 1: for link drones, grand roots and imagery analysts. There are
Speaker 1: some seven thousand aerial drones compared with fear than fifty
Speaker 1: a decade ago. Now consider that we increasingly have something else,
Speaker 1: spy flies which were equipped with sensors of micro cameras,
Speaker 1: and the fact that since September eleven, uh the hours
Speaker 1: the Air Force devotes to flying missions for intelligence, surveillance
Speaker 1: and reconnaissance have gone up three thousand, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And everyday the Air Force processes fifteen hundred hours of
Speaker 1: full motion videos and in the fifteen hundred still images,
Speaker 1: a lot of it from the predator drones and reapers.
Speaker 1: So that's one tiny aspect of surveilling power that exists
Speaker 1: in the world today, and of course, in the in
Speaker 1: the past few months, the n s A has been
Speaker 1: all over the headlines for both its domestic surveillance programs
Speaker 1: and its international surveillance programs and uh and that of
Speaker 1: course is a really hot button topic as well, with
Speaker 1: critics charging of the NSA not only infringes on our privacy,
Speaker 1: but lays the technological groundwork for a true police state.
Speaker 1: And it's really just part of an overall poptic um
Speaker 1: structure on society. Yeah, and the problem there is that
Speaker 1: legislation cannot keep up with technological advances. So you have
Speaker 1: these sort of things being rolled out and if they
Speaker 1: are challenged, and then takes a while to actually get
Speaker 1: that policy in place or that law in place to
Speaker 1: sort of balance out what sort of surveilling power is
Speaker 1: needed to run a government versus what just becomes overwhelming
Speaker 1: and and there's a huge debate about that right now. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that in a way, every time
Speaker 1: you use the Internet, you are willingly submitting yourself to
Speaker 1: this penopticon. I mean you think about the humble cookie, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about this tiny, little omniscient tendril
Speaker 1: of the Internet that gathering information about you. It's recording
Speaker 1: your Internet browsing habits, and it's reporting them to a
Speaker 1: business that you know nothing about. So in a way,
Speaker 1: the corporation becomes the tower you know, the central tower
Speaker 1: with the watchman, and we are in those little cubicles
Speaker 1: surrounding it with all of our information being passed on.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to be dramatic about it. It's
Speaker 1: just if you really want to look at this system,
Speaker 1: this panoptic system, and look at it in the digital sphere,
Speaker 1: that's an essence how it's working. Yeah. Like I think
Speaker 1: of browsing the Internet at work, which I mean in
Speaker 1: some places of work, that's that's already breaking the rules.
Speaker 1: Here we do a lot of Internet research, so it's
Speaker 1: it's part of our job. But but every time we
Speaker 1: we conduct a search and go to a website here
Speaker 1: at work, there are like several layers of potential panopticonic
Speaker 1: thinking going on. First of all, all right, the cookies
Speaker 1: that are talking to my Facebook and to me into
Speaker 1: this site and this site. You know what to what
Speaker 1: degree am I being watched there? The side I just
Speaker 1: went to. All right, all these different corporations just found
Speaker 1: out about it. Uh, next time using a work machine
Speaker 1: on a work Internet connection. I know that they have
Speaker 1: certain systems in place. I don't know the details of
Speaker 1: them or how they work, but I know that they
Speaker 1: can slash our, you know, observing what I'm doing on
Speaker 1: my machine and uh and so it eventually becomes this
Speaker 1: situation of you you feel like you're observed all the time,
Speaker 1: and what are you comfortable being observed doing? You know,
Speaker 1: you end up rationalizing like, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: this website. I'm clearly going here for research. I have
Speaker 1: a good excuse when the inspector leaves the tower and
Speaker 1: comes to get me, like like, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: weird thinking you're you're left in because you assume you're
Speaker 1: being watched. Now, to add to this um are other
Speaker 1: technological chats, advancements, however you want to swing it. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about Google Glass because here some people would say, okay,
Speaker 1: here's this thing that is recording not only audio, but
Speaker 1: video of everything that's going around them. So now we
Speaker 1: have this idea of the panopticon as us gathering information
Speaker 1: about one another. And this does sound a little bit paranoid,
Speaker 1: but I think that the crux of this argument is
Speaker 1: if and when everyone is wearing Google Glass, then it
Speaker 1: becomes normalizing behavior to surveil people even though you're not.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't call it surveiling. You know, your co workers
Speaker 1: or your friends, but you are gathering data about them,
Speaker 1: and essentially there is a third party that is using
Speaker 1: that data in some way and linking it up with
Speaker 1: other data. And we've talked about facial recognition systems, or
Speaker 1: it's just a different layers that can be put together
Speaker 1: to put to create really a profile of a person
Speaker 1: and try to predict their behavior and what they're doing
Speaker 1: and buying and engaging in. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: already crazy. Where to the point where you put a
Speaker 1: photo up on Facebook, Like, for instance, I'll put a
Speaker 1: photo up of me and my wife and our child,
Speaker 1: and the Facebook will say, hey, look at the face
Speaker 1: of your wife. Do you want to identify this? We
Speaker 1: know who this is. Facebook knows who it is. And
Speaker 1: then they pointed that the face of of our child,
Speaker 1: and and Facebook says, who is this? Tell us who
Speaker 1: this is? Tag them now? And I say, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have him yet, not wait, And I'm sure
Speaker 1: he'll be on there, but for now, he's he's outside
Speaker 1: of your system, he's outside of your panopticon, right. Well,
Speaker 1: in in some ways he's outside of society, right because
Speaker 1: if this is what we increasingly continue to do we
Speaker 1: indoctrinating another one another via our virtual internet presence. Then
Speaker 1: if you're not in the yet, then you're operating outside
Speaker 1: of society. Yeah. We've already looked at some commentary before
Speaker 1: about how the newer generations the idea of private lives
Speaker 1: has to varying degrees eroded. Uh, there's just more. They're
Speaker 1: more comfortable by and large with the idea of just
Speaker 1: living your life out there on the Internet where anyone
Speaker 1: can see it. And so I can imagine a day
Speaker 1: when it becomes the norm that you're also contributing to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this panoficon structure through the information it's streaming through your
Speaker 1: your glasses or whatever kind of a personal computing device
Speaker 1: you're you're wearing, and then adding to the surveillance information
Speaker 1: on the society you live in. Yeah, because I guess
Speaker 1: the flip side on this is that, um, the more
Speaker 1: data that's being put out there, the more transparency could occur. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think the positive spin on this would be Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're we are collecting an immense amount of data
Speaker 1: about one another in society, but as a result, perhaps
Speaker 1: we would have less corruption, we would have less ne'er
Speaker 1: do well is Um, well, but Fuco would never say that. No, No,
Speaker 1: I would never say that that is the that's what
Speaker 1: the answer at the end of I know, I'm playing
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate and saying it's someone on the other side
Speaker 1: of this argument could say, Hey, there's there's a worth
Speaker 1: in having this amount of data out there, and that
Speaker 1: there's no way that everyone, all the corporations in the world,
Speaker 1: all pulled together, could truly analyze the amount of data
Speaker 1: that comes out of it. That's one argument. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: all comes back to what you were saying earlier about
Speaker 1: the idea that the Panopticon is the universe and the
Speaker 1: inspector in the tower, in the Inspector's lodge is God.
Speaker 1: What kind of God do you do you end up believing?
Speaker 1: And do you believe in a benevolent God who wants
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on us and make sure that
Speaker 1: we're safe in our comfy selves. Is it just a
Speaker 1: complete benign god that is just sort of watching as
Speaker 1: we either live comfortably or are horribly beaten in ourselves,
Speaker 1: or is it an oppressive God who is there to
Speaker 1: make sure that we stay in this grim, dirty cell
Speaker 1: and uh and our only moved according to his her
Speaker 1: its whims. So that's the problem, um, is that there's
Speaker 1: no one god in the situation. Right. Depending on where
Speaker 1: you live and that the kind of culture you live
Speaker 1: in and the politics surrounding it, you could have a
Speaker 1: benevolent god or you could have a vengeful god. All right,
Speaker 1: there you go, the Panopticon in a nutshell. Um. Before
Speaker 1: we close out here, I'm gonna call over the mail
Speaker 1: bot and I'm gonna do a quick listener mail. All right,
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Peter cron And uh,
Speaker 1: who's a long time listener uh and as always hitting
Speaker 1: us up with some cool links on our Facebook page
Speaker 1: and writing us with some cool thoughts. And here's just
Speaker 1: some some wonderful musings that he presented to us. He says, Hey,
Speaker 1: there got something I was thinking about today that maybe
Speaker 1: either of you to have thought about. I'm wondering about consciousness.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article by Carl Zimmer which had
Speaker 1: me thinking about what it would be like if our
Speaker 1: massively connected world developed a real, next level consciousness that
Speaker 1: it's individual components were mostly unaware of. Would this super
Speaker 1: mind start probing itself like we do with our own brains,
Speaker 1: Would it at first be as clumsy as our own
Speaker 1: experiments before we understood our own biology a bit better.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that a probe might consist of something like
Speaker 1: these microscopic fast financial dealings on Wall Street that we've
Speaker 1: assumed we're traders using super conputers to manipulate the mark
Speaker 1: could Some have said they could be experiments, but by
Speaker 1: who How else might our new mind test its own boundaries.
Speaker 1: It may just realize it's consciouness when other similar entities
Speaker 1: arise from the ether of the Internet, or communicate somehow,
Speaker 1: or it makes corss into taking to space exploration, drive
Speaker 1: competition via heightened cybercrime, and espionage between countries based on
Speaker 1: historical knowledge of how to fund these expensive ventures. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there must be people already doing actual testing to
Speaker 1: see if this thing is alive. Man, that just makes
Speaker 1: me think of the whole conscious problem, like consciousness problem
Speaker 1: that we've talked about, and how much more difficult that
Speaker 1: would become. I think, right, if you're adding another layer
Speaker 1: on a macro layer on top of our existing conundrum
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Um, but maybe that's the consciousness that would
Speaker 1: figure out our consciousness for us hopefully. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you create this god you know, in a way it
Speaker 1: ties in nicely with the idea of the panopticon. If
Speaker 1: we it through something like this, if we were able
Speaker 1: to either create or accidentally create or give birth to
Speaker 1: a super consciousness that ends up more or less occupying
Speaker 1: that center tower in the panopticon. Uh, you know, what
Speaker 1: would the effects be and what would the nature of
Speaker 1: that entity be? And how might it manipulate the prison
Speaker 1: to maintain control or to maximize efficiency? And could it
Speaker 1: be out at holographic eye in the sky for us
Speaker 1: all just to look up in case upon Well, what
Speaker 1: is that a reference to? I just think that it
Speaker 1: should be if there's going to be the sort of
Speaker 1: superconsciousness that it should be able to have these a
Speaker 1: symbol of itself to be mount well, particularly if it's
Speaker 1: going to truly occupy the place of a panopticon. Well,
Speaker 1: that's like the eye of saurin right, and the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings that floats over the the tower and
Speaker 1: more door that's right now, it's really the eye of Providence. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: there's another excellent example of panopticon right there. All right, So, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to reach out to us, you want to
Speaker 1: talk to us about the panopticon. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. I mean specifically, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the idea that we're living in a panopticon? Now,
Speaker 1: do you feel like this? Do you feel this sort
Speaker 1: of fear and paranoia it you? You may be observed
Speaker 1: at all times? And how does that affect your behavior?
Speaker 1: How does that affect your happiness level? Let us know
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. You can find us
Speaker 1: at all the usual places, specially stuffed able your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the mothership, that's where all the podcast
Speaker 1: episodes are, the blog post, the videos, etcetera. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Google Plus, remind
Speaker 1: Stuff show on YouTube. And hey, if any of you
Speaker 1: are in Cuba or ben to Cuba and have actually
Speaker 1: visited the prison we were talking about earlier, let us
Speaker 1: know what that was like. I've seen the photos and
Speaker 1: they're amazing, but nothing beats a personal visit to something
Speaker 1: like that. And if you should be so bold as
Speaker 1: to craft an email that may or may not be
Speaker 1: read by others besides Robert myself, you can do so
Speaker 1: by sending it to blow the mind at discovery dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it, how stuff works, dot com