From the Desk of Kiler Davenport

Bentham needed a tower. That was his technological limitation. Almost 250 years later, we do not. The final stage of the Panopticon's evolution is not a bigger prison. It is the disappearance of the prison altogether. From One Tower to a Network The surveillance landscape described throughout this series has traveled an extraordinary distance. Samuel Bentham began with workers in Russia. Jeremy Bentham converted central inspection into an institutional philosophy. Prisons in Europe, Cuba and elsewhere experimented with variations of circular observation. Orwell imagined surveillance moving into everyday life. Foucault recognized that the real significance of the Panopticon was not the building but the behavioral mechanism it represented. Then digital technology eliminated the building. Sensors could become distributed. Records could become centralized. Searches could become remote. Observation could become automated. The tower had finally escaped architecture. 132,940 Points of Obs...

George Orwell did not write 1984 as a book about Jeremy Bentham. But the world of 1984 contains a principle Bentham would have recognized immediately. You do not need to know whether you are being watched. You need to know that you could be . The Telescreen Orwell's telescreen collapses the distance between surveillance and ordinary life. Observation enters the home. That represents an important development in the Panopticon's evolution. Bentham's prisoner entered a surveillance institution. Orwell's citizen lived inside one. There was no meaningful boundary between the institution and everyday existence. That distinction is enormous. The Panopticon surrounds the prisoner. Orwell surrounds society. The Psychological Objective Both systems understand something fundamental about human behavior. Certainty is unnecessary. Possibility can be enough. People behave differently when observation might be occurring. They choose words differently. They select companions differen...