Rage Against The Panopticon
What I've learned about mass surveillance.
We live in the most surveilled time in history.
Everyone wants our data. Everyone wants to track us. Everyone wants to catalog us. It’s about money. It’s about control. It’s about invasion. It’s about making you feel like you’re being watched all the time.
There’s a plan behind this. In fact, a social theorist named Jeremy Bentham once offered the concept of the panopticon. In short, it’s about creating the everpresent sensation that everything you do can be seen. When people feel like they’re being watched all the time, you don’t even need police.
Everyone polices themselves.
The desire for privacy lies at the core of our psyche. It’s no wonder so many of our anxiety dreams revolve around the idea of appearing in public exposed and vulnerable, or watching deep secrets spilling out everywhere. Most of us aren’t trying to do anything “wrong.” We just know how judgmental society gets when they find out you do something they consider “weird.”
The irony here is t…