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What Is Technocultures
1. What is
Technoculture
Phillip Simmonds
• The Internet
– Discipline and Control
– The participatory Panopticon
2. Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and
paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
This piece focuses on the cultural influence of
the internet. An increasingly important part of
technological progress in recent years.
3. The Internet
• The internet “broke media monopolies by
enabling the free flow of
information, reinvigorating free speech and
democracy”
Although..
“..some condemned the Internet for its excessive
freedoms, for the ways in which it encouraged
so-called deviant behaviour that put our
future at risk”.
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
4. Deviant behaviours?
• Who can gain access to our information?
• When browsing a web page we send:
Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser
type, language preference, and userdomain
often contains information such as your physical
location or username
5. “Using a packet sniffer, however, you can see
that your computer constantly wanders
without you” Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
Image Source: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262033321intro1.pdf
6. • “Your screen, with its windows and
background, suggests that your computer only
sends and receives data at your request. It
suggests that you are that all-powerful user
Microsoft invoked to sell its Internet Explorer
by asking, ‘‘Where do you want to go
today?’’”
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
7. Michel Foucault – Discipline Societies
• French philosopher who’s ideas of discipline
societies and sexuality from his works
‘Discipline and Punish’ (1975) and ‘The History
of Sexuality’ (1984) are used by Chun to
envisage the Internet as a sort of modern day
prison
8. Gilles Deleuze – Control Society
• Another French philosopher who used the
ideas of Foucault’s discipline societies from
‘Discipline and Punish’ (1975), to form his idea
of ‘control societies’ described in his
‘Postscript on Control Societies’(1990)
9. “The computer, with its emphasis on
information and its reduction of the individual
to the password, epitomizes control societies.
Digital language makes control systems
invisible: we no longer experience the visible
yet unverifiable gaze but a network of
nonvisualizable digital control.”
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
11. What is the Panopticon
• The idea of the panopticon came from English
philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
• The idea is commonly used as a metaphor for
the surveillance of internet users by persons
such as
governments, corporations, criminals/hackers
, and even regular citizens
12. What is the Panopticon
“The Panopticon encapsulated the
disciplinary mechanism for Foucault”
The general idea is of a prison
composed of a central tower that is
surrounded by an outer structure with
individual cells that can be observed
from the middle.
“In the Panopticon, visibility was a
trap—the inhabitants could always be
viewed by the central tower, but since
the windows of the central tower were
to be covered by blinds they could never
be certain when they were being
Image Source:
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/socio/images/Panopticon.jpg
watched”
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
13. • “The major effect of the Panopticon was to
‘‘induce in the inmate a state of conscious and
permanent visibility that assures the
automatic functioning of power.’’
• “To work, power had to be visible, yet
unverifiable.”
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2006).
Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
15. • The internet Panopticon is not something that is
being forced on us
• If the internet becomes the most viable option of
doing tasks such as reading the news, talking to
others, watching movies, shopping etc then it
becomes a cultural necessity
• “Further, the implementation of the panopticon
model may be perceived by users as a necessity if
they are convinced that such a structure would
protect them or make their transactions online
more efficient”
Brignall, T (2002), The New Panopticon:
The Internet Viewed as a Structure of Social Control, Theory & Science, [http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.001/brignall.html]
16. • “The inmates (are) caught up in a power situation of which
they are themselves the bearers” (Foucault, 1972: 201).
• Those within the panopticon becomes less concerned of a
‘Big Brother’ but rather of ‘Little Brothers’ (such as other
inmates) who may keep on eye on you for their own gains.
• The panopticon becomes:
• “a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body
into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posed
everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert”
(Foucault, 1972: 214).
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse On Language.
Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A.
Sheridan New York: Vintage Books.
17. • In one of his article from
WorldChanging.com, Jamais Cascio refers to this
as a ‘participatory panopticon’
• “constant surveillance is done by the citizens
themselves, and is done by choice. It's not
imposed on us by a malevolent bureaucracy or
faceless corporations. The participatory
panopticon will be the emergent result of myriad
independent rational decisions, a bottom-up
version of the constantly watched society.”
Cascio, J (2005), The Rise of the Participatory
Panopticon, WorldChanging, [http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002651.html]
18. • Cascio refers to the idea of the individual citizens using
technology to watch those in charge as ‘sousveillance’
• “..a recent neologism meaning quot;watching from belowquot; -
- in comparison to quot;surveillance,quot; meaning quot;watching
from above.””
• “Proponents of the notion see it as an
equalizer, making it possible for individual citizens to
keep tabs on those in charge. For the sousveillance
movement, if the question is “who watches the
watchmen?” the answer is ”all of us.””
Cascio, J (2005), The Rise of the Participatory
Panopticon, WorldChanging, [http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002651.html]
19. • “Digital devices and network connections
can allow individuals to bypass chains of
command and control”
• A picture of a prisoner being abused by the
American military in Iraq, which was then
sent via email to the rest of the world
• In reaction to the photos, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: quot;We're
functioning ... in the Information Age, where
people are running around with digital
cameras and taking these unbelievable
photographs and then passing them
off, against the law, to the media, to our
surprise, when they had not even arrived in
the Pentagon.””
Image Source: http://www.worldchanging.com/images/Abu_Ghraib.jpg
Cascio, J (2005), The Rise of the Participatory
Panopticon, WorldChanging, [http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002651.ht
ml]
20. The I.T. Generation
• Are we living in an easier and more advanced
age than ever before?
Or
• Is technology impairing and hindering us..
Even controlling us more than it is providing
freedom?
21. URL Reference List
• Control & Freedom: Power & Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262033321intro1.pdf
• Deleuze and the Internet
• http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-December-
2007/Buchanan.html
• Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy:
• http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/06/03/web_2_privacy/
• Panopticon.com: online surveillance and the commodification of privacy:
• http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-871016_ITM
• The New Panopticon:
The Internet Viewed as a Structure of Social Control:
• http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.001/brignall.html
• The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon:
• http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002651.html
• Gilles Deleuze ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’:
• http://tannerhiggin.the-means.com/blog/2008/04/06/gilles-deleuze-
postscript-on-the-societies-of-control/
• Taking Liberties:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb0sY_p94cM
