michel.foucault@prescience.com

From Tom Brignall's article, "The New Panopticon: The Internet Viewed as a Structure of Social Control":

"If Internet service providers or police agencies randomly monitor Internet users, then the Internet begins to share similar properties with the panopticon prison structure. The panopticon as a conceptual structure can be applied to any physical structure that provides the ability of those in a position of authority to monitor the “inmates” without the “inmates” knowing when they are being monitored. What is unique within the structure of the Internet is that it allows multiple layers of observation to occur such that the “inmates” can become the observers of other “inmates”. In such a situation, no one knows who is the observer and who is the observed."

Read the rest here.