December 5, 2013 • 29 mins
Welcome to the panopticon, both a prison of design and a prison of the mind, where everyone is susceptible to surveillance and no one knows who's being watched. Join Robert and Julie as they explore the history, design and philosophical import of this physical and metaphorical prison.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie teas Julie listeners.
Imagine a vast circular prison. Okay, you with me, yes, Okay,
(00:25):
Now you step inside, and you'll find a curious arrangement
of the cells. Because most of this enclosed face is
exactly bad. It's empty space. The quicle cells line the
circumference of the inner walls. Uh, several stories worth in
fact in their bars, all face inward toward a lone
guard tower known as the Inspector's Lodge. Okay, Now, standing
within your prison cell, you can't see any of your
(00:45):
fellow cell mates, can't see any of the other cells.
All you can see is this tower, and you can't
see the inspector, that supposedly man's it due to a
mesh screen. But you know he's there. You know he's watching. Uh.
You know he's referencing a detailed map of which prisoner
occupies which cell, and you know that he listens in
as well. But of course, the inspector can only look
(01:07):
or listen to one cell at any given moment, right,
but you never know if his attention is turned to you,
so you have to assume at all times that he
might be listening to you. You have to avoid that
type to error and cognition. It's the only way to
deal with the endless uncertainty. It's safer to assume, right.
And besides that, you know that prisoners are regularly moved
to new cells based on good or bad behavior. So
(01:28):
I see that you have had a look inside my house.
Oh is this how you have your house arranged? Yeah?
So you're the inspector. What makes it really easy to
keep tabs on everybody? Yeah? So I think what you
have just described as something called the panopticon. Yes, And
we're going to talk about this today. We're going to
look at how spaces can have the power to liberate,
(01:49):
as we've talked about before with labyrinths, or they have
the power to oppress. And when you think about prison
and you think about prisoners, you think about anxiety, loneliness,
in vulnerability, and so this panopticon is really this idea
of these concentric circles closing in on us. Yeah. And
what's great about it is that it's not only this
(02:10):
this wonderful and then disturbing to varying levels design for
how we might use a physical space to have this
drastic effect on the human mind. But it also over
the years has been picked up as a philosophical idea,
as a metaphor that we apply to government, to internet culture,
you name it. I mean, you do a search for panopticon,
(02:31):
you will find people using it just about every uh
way they possibly can to criticize a given system of order, government, bureaucracy, etcetera. Well,
probably one of the oldest ways in which it's been
linked is this metaphor of the seeing eye of God, right,
particularly in Western culture, because when you're indoctrinated into Western culture,
(02:51):
you're indoctrinated this idea that there's this uh, this powerful
gaze and this powerful memory of a deity looking over
all of us. Yeah, he knows what you've been doing
when you're awake. Yeah, Santa Claus and God kind of
the kind of share the same space and in the
Western mindset, and and you're right to to to your point,
(03:12):
the idea of the inspector and the Inspector's lodge and
that tower at the center of the Penoptacon is very
much the idea of a god, but a but a
very uh, non personal god, a god that's all up
in your business. But also you have you have no
real clue as to what they look like, what they are,
what their their their ideas are regarding your fate in
(03:34):
this strange, strangely ordered prison. Well, this is a vengeful God.
And um, this is something that you know what came
out of the mind of a English utilitarian philosopher by
the name of Jeremy Bentham, who unveiled this architectural marvel,
these plans for this panoptic into the world. So as
you said, you know, let's revisit that again that we're
(03:56):
talking about two sets of concentric towers within the other,
with cells lining the outer wall, being visible to and
subject to regulation from the watcher the eye of God.
And those people they would live, they would eat, they
would sleep and work in these cells and what they
thought was constant surveillance. Now give you a little background
(04:19):
Jeremy Bentham with the eighteen thirty two again. He's a
British philosopher and and something of a political radical. He's
mainly known for the philosophy of utilitarianism, which elevates actions
based on their relevant consequences to the overall happiness of
everyone affected. And he had something of a hedonistic approach
to happiness, defining its simply as a matter of experiencing
pleasure and a lack of pain. Um. Now, when it
(04:42):
comes to his uh popticon, uh he, his approach to
it was, this is an overall good idea. He wasn't saying,
I have a great humanity crushing concept. I want to
they all in the world, you know, he was saying, Look,
prisons are a mess. We're in this. We're in the
midst of of of overall attempts to form our prisons
and make them more effective and make them less horrifying.
(05:04):
So here's one way we can do it, and we
can make it more cost effective and overall just more
effective as well. Because if you have a couple of
guards in a central tower watching over everyone, then you
don't have guards that are going, you know, on the
beat to every single cell and looking over right, so
you have less manpower that actually has to enforce this
(05:25):
feeling that you're being surveiled. Yeah, you end up with
four guards that you're to only two of which are
actually paid because you have the two guys, you know,
one guy maybe walking around. You have one guy in
the tower, and then you have fear and uncertainty, and
you don't have to pay for those because those guys
are are are summoned out of the very physicality of
the structure. Yeah, and it's actually compounded that this this
(05:46):
this fear by this idea of having those cells being illuminated,
but the observation tower actually being dark, so that the
prisoners could be observed all the time. They wouldn't be
able to tell when they were being observed, and so
the goal is for them to learn to act as
if they were constantly under surveillance. And the idea is
that once this uh, I guess you could call it
(06:08):
self discipline was instilled, that prisoners could be released into
society with the capacity to regulate their own behavior through paranoia.
Really and yeah and benthem, I mean he's not again,
he's not trying to be dastardly about this. He's sort
of thinking, this is the way that we can uh
(06:29):
manage the prison problem and reform the prisoner via paranoia exactly.
So originally he thought about this as a prison design,
but he also thought it was quote applicable to any
sort of establishment in which persons of any description are
to be kept under inspection. So we're talking about insane
asylums for houses. But this is where it gets into society. Factories, schools,
(06:53):
and hospitals. Yeah, I mean, without without getting into the
fine details of it, you can see where that would
that would make sense, and say a hospital where you
you want constant surveillance more or less of people's conditions,
or at the very least you want people to feel
like they're under constant care and surveillance, So that would
make sense. And obviously with the school situation, but sometimes
(07:16):
it feels like a school is very similar to a
prisoner insane asylum, and you have to have that kind
of order in place to make sure that everyone's doing
right and and obeying their the laws of the school,
not cheating on every test, not skipping classes. The problem
with us and we'll get more into this, uh in
a bit, is this inherent distrust right? Because Okay, you
(07:39):
see it extended to prisons, but factories, schools, and hospitals.
It's not necessarily just taking the form of hey, we're
just going to surveil and make sure everything is okay.
There's this idea that something is wrong. Someone somewhere is
doing something wrong. Right, Yeah, the whole system ends up
being predicated on guilt, and and it's him to Guildea.
(08:01):
All right, So what you're you're you're probably asking yourself.
You're saying, all right, well, where's the panopticon? Point to
the pen opticon, so I might see a picture of it. Uh,
And certainly there's some wonderful sketches of it, because I've
been to put a lot of thought and effort into
the designs. He worked with an architect. He was even
taught in talks to see his design implemented at one point.
But the Penopticon was never built in his lifetime. In fact,
(08:24):
no true panopticon prison was ever built another and no
one ever took his designs and said all right, I'm
gonna build this this thing that he designed. Part of
the problem here is that by the time surveillance technology
really caught up with his vision, you no longer need
that specific architecture to make it happen. Like once you
can actually wire every prison cell conceivably with video and audio.
(08:48):
If you've reached the point where you can do that,
you don't need this giant space with all this wasted
empty space between the cells and the tower. You can
just build a big, you know, farm of cubes and
then just wire it up right. Yeah, I mean it
is a huge cost, and politicians were interested, but they
weren't necessarily going to implement it. Yeah, and we see
this all the time even today. You know, you're always
finding stuff showing up in your your feed, your news feed,
(09:10):
or your Facebook feed where it's like some crazy design
that's going to innovate the way that we travel or
do business or live. And for the most part, you're
not going to see those designs implemented. Those represent the
extreme that under the best of situations will um you'll
see aspects of that implemented further down the chain, or
at least will draw um inspiration and innovation in that direction. Right.
(09:32):
But so it was never truly built, but it's still
influenced other prisons. Yes, And probably the best example that
we can we can find for this is a Cuba's
UH Presidio MODELO and this was built between n and
nine and it actually consists of five panopticon buildings, each
(09:52):
designed to hold prisoners. So these are five buildings UH
cells lining the inside of the the outer walls, and
then there's a tower in the center where the guards
would be able to watch everyone. And uh, you know it,
it operated, it was functional, and you actually saw some
some star prisoners there. I Fidel Castro was a prisoner
there during the rebellion and uh, but of course, then
(10:14):
after his rise to power, you see the thing just
stuffed with political prisoners, um, homosexuals, Jeovah's witnesses, counter revolutionaries,
various enemies of the state, and so the population quickly
skyrockets to six thousand inmates. Now, of course, that's the
thing about prisons. If they're built to contain a certain
number of people. Um, if you overstuffed them, you're gonna
(10:36):
overload any system, You're gonna overload the wiring of the prison.
And that's exactly what happened, you that you have overcrowding
at least riots in nineteen sixty one, and then it
was permanently closed by the government in nineteen sixty six.
Today it's a museum and I think there's a school
there and also some some offices. But for the most
part you can you can still find pictures of this
online and and you can visit it if you're in Cuba,
(10:57):
and it's a it's really remarkable to look at because
is it's the idea of the panopticon brought to physical life.
I wanted to point out a quote by Architects, Designers
Planners for Social Responsibility that's a d p s R.
There is an essay on this about prisons and panopticon,
and the quote is the best intention. Reformist designs have
(11:20):
believed that more complete control of prisoners through design would
be used only to further higher goals such as religious
awakenings and in a reflection, but in fact control is
an end in itself, and prisons just recreate the powerlessness
of the member of poor and oppressed groups under even
stricter rules than they face on the outside. That was
(11:42):
something interesting to ponder just in general. Not you know,
the panopticon is really this idealized version of power and control.
But the prison system as it exists right now, Um,
there are many people who would say that it doesn't work,
it doesn't reform. I agree, I agree, And that's that's
definitely a subject for another episode. We could do a
whole episode on the state of prisons and and the
(12:05):
mindset that goes into prison designs. Overall and just let
the philosophy that goes into an house change over time. Indeed,
so let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
we are going to look more at this panopticon from
the perspective of Michelle fel Cole. All right, we're back.
(12:27):
So yes, Uh, that's the best example of the panopticon
physically that we have. And you do see uh panopticonic
elements incorporated into various other prison designs. But for the
most part, where panopticon continues to have the most power
today is as metaphor. That's right. And uh, that's why
I wanted to bring up that quote by the A. D.
(12:48):
Spr because Michelle Fockle is a French philosopher who brought
up the panopticon as this idea of a metaphor of
our society. That disciplinary systems are prisons in particular, with
a panopticon is the ideal type there they can be
social failures. Yeah, fo Call's picture of modern disciplinary society
(13:11):
breaks into three primary techniques that governmental powers used to
control the masses. That's hierarchical observation, normalizing, judgment, and examination.
Now and where this panopticon enters into all that is
that according to focal power over people can can be
achieved merely by observing them. So it's like with the panopticon.
(13:33):
But the deal is that a single inspector would be impossible, right,
especially when you're talking about governmental power, So you need
relays of inspectors. You need all of them arrange in
a hierarchy so that data can pass up and down
the chain based on importance. And in all of this
fool focusing on society's modern transition from a quote culture
of spectacle to make our sero or prison culture. Now
(13:55):
this gets into the idea that what happened when you
broke the law in the old days, and like really
broke it, like broke it hard, you would be made
spectacle of right, And that's what he says. He says
that this is a quote for him. By the effect
of backlighting, one can observe from the tower standing out
precisely against the light, the small captive shadows, and the
cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages,
(14:15):
so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone,
perfectly individualized and constantly visible. So he's saying that this
stage that the has been reversed, that the audience is
now in the cells, and the actor, the performer, is
that that watch person looking over everybody else, and it
still remains too spectacle. Really, Yeah, a reversal of the
(14:39):
old days where everyone will be gathered around the guillotine
or the heads of his block, or the or the
news or what have you. So, yeah, and within those
three points that you had made, the hierarchical distribution of information,
examination of the information, but also normalizing. This is a
really important aspect of this, and this is what a
lot of people run with when they look at our
society today, look at the different ways that panopticon can
(15:02):
exist in different formats. So what call has to say
about normalizing, he says, Hence the major effect of the
panopticon to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in
its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action. Again,
(15:24):
this is sort of going back to what Bentham was
really saying, is trying to instill that paranoia that you're
being watched even if you're not being watched. Yeah, they
might be watching me. So therefore there's this always feeling,
there's always this feeling that kind of evens out that
they are watching me. Yeah, and I'll just skip ahead.
In this quote, he says, in short, that the inmates
should be caught up in a power situation of which
(15:45):
they are themselves the bearer. So they are the bearer
of this, and it's this normalization of always being under
the gaze. And this is what call had a problem
with because he said that again, it's not just limited
to prison design. It's a meta for for all types
of different social organizations and structure, schools, factories, and governments
now perdue universities. Dino Feluga breaks down the effects of
(16:08):
pen optic organizational models into into seven overall effects, and
I think these are pretty interesting. This again is his
view and his commentary on focals philosophy. Number One, society
becomes less willing to contest unjust laws, like everyone's under
the gaze of the observer, and so therefore, even if
the law seemed to becoming becoming unjust, you're less likely
(16:29):
to speak out of them, because the gaze is in
theory on everyone uh. Number two, rehabilitation rather than crueler
and unusual punishment. So again we talked about that it
becomes more about the prison system rather than the spectacle. Uh.
Then there's birth of an information society. You become more
and more dependent on technology and record keeping. Uh. You
(16:49):
have a bureaucracy of information in which people become numbers
because again you're having to keep track of everybody and
keep track of everything. And this is the panoptic system.
Efficiency becomes more and more important, even at the cost
of exploitation or injustice. And finally, a specialization. Members of
the workforce are organized into increasingly specialized fields so that
we increasingly rely on other experts to complete tasks that
(17:12):
had previously been shared or common knowledge, so that you know,
we're talking to the preparation of meats and other food products, building, construction, transportation, etcetera.
His idea here is that with the panopticon, it kind
of breeds bureaucracy, and bureau bureaucracy is the uh is
the brick and mortar of the governmental Uh penopticon to
(17:33):
power panopticon. Uh, that that is society. Yeah, and these
these unwritten rules, UM, and this idea that you're being surveiled,
this idea that it's all normal. Right, you can start
to look around and as people have done, particularly at
the drone situation, and say, okay, so what about the
pentopticon and modern society. We'll start to think about how
(17:55):
the Pentagon has scores of communication satellites, many of them
for link drones, grand roots and imagery analysts. There are
some seven thousand aerial drones compared with fear than fifty
a decade ago. Now consider that we increasingly have something else,
spy flies which were equipped with sensors of micro cameras,
and the fact that since September eleven, uh the hours
(18:17):
the Air Force devotes to flying missions for intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance have gone up three thousand, one hundred percent.
And everyday the Air Force processes fifteen hundred hours of
full motion videos and in the fifteen hundred still images,
a lot of it from the predator drones and reapers.
So that's one tiny aspect of surveilling power that exists
(18:40):
in the world today, and of course, in the in
the past few months, the n s A has been
all over the headlines for both its domestic surveillance programs
and its international surveillance programs and uh and that of
course is a really hot button topic as well, with
critics charging of the NSA not only infringes on our privacy,
but lays the technological groundwork for a true police state.
(19:01):
And it's really just part of an overall poptic um
structure on society. Yeah, and the problem there is that
legislation cannot keep up with technological advances. So you have
these sort of things being rolled out and if they
are challenged, and then takes a while to actually get
that policy in place or that law in place to
(19:22):
sort of balance out what sort of surveilling power is
needed to run a government versus what just becomes overwhelming
and and there's a huge debate about that right now. Um.
The other thing is that in a way, every time
you use the Internet, you are willingly submitting yourself to
(19:44):
this penopticon. I mean you think about the humble cookie, right,
I mean you're talking about this tiny, little omniscient tendril
of the Internet that gathering information about you. It's recording
your Internet browsing habits, and it's reporting them to a
business that you know nothing about. So in a way,
the corporation becomes the tower you know, the central tower
(20:09):
with the watchman, and we are in those little cubicles
surrounding it with all of our information being passed on.
And I'm not trying to be dramatic about it. It's
just if you really want to look at this system,
this panoptic system, and look at it in the digital sphere,
that's an essence how it's working. Yeah. Like I think
of browsing the Internet at work, which I mean in
(20:30):
some places of work, that's that's already breaking the rules.
Here we do a lot of Internet research, so it's
it's part of our job. But but every time we
we conduct a search and go to a website here
at work, there are like several layers of potential panopticonic
thinking going on. First of all, all right, the cookies
that are talking to my Facebook and to me into
(20:52):
this site and this site. You know what to what
degree am I being watched there? The side I just
went to. All right, all these different corporations just found
out about it. Uh, next time using a work machine
on a work Internet connection. I know that they have
certain systems in place. I don't know the details of
them or how they work, but I know that they
can slash our, you know, observing what I'm doing on
(21:16):
my machine and uh and so it eventually becomes this
situation of you you feel like you're observed all the time,
and what are you comfortable being observed doing? You know,
you end up rationalizing like, all right, I'm going to
this website. I'm clearly going here for research. I have
a good excuse when the inspector leaves the tower and
comes to get me, like like, that's the kind of
(21:37):
weird thinking you're you're left in because you assume you're
being watched. Now, to add to this um are other
technological chats, advancements, however you want to swing it. I'm
thinking about Google Glass because here some people would say, okay,
here's this thing that is recording not only audio, but
video of everything that's going around them. So now we
(22:01):
have this idea of the panopticon as us gathering information
about one another. And this does sound a little bit paranoid,
but I think that the crux of this argument is
if and when everyone is wearing Google Glass, then it
becomes normalizing behavior to surveil people even though you're not.
(22:21):
You wouldn't call it surveiling. You know, your co workers
or your friends, but you are gathering data about them,
and essentially there is a third party that is using
that data in some way and linking it up with
other data. And we've talked about facial recognition systems, or
it's just a different layers that can be put together
to put to create really a profile of a person
(22:44):
and try to predict their behavior and what they're doing
and buying and engaging in. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
already crazy. Where to the point where you put a
photo up on Facebook, Like, for instance, I'll put a
photo up of me and my wife and our child,
and the Facebook will say, hey, look at the face
of your wife. Do you want to identify this? We
(23:06):
know who this is. Facebook knows who it is. And
then they pointed that the face of of our child,
and and Facebook says, who is this? Tell us who
this is? Tag them now? And I say, you don't.
You don't have him yet, not wait, And I'm sure
he'll be on there, but for now, he's he's outside
of your system, he's outside of your panopticon, right. Well,
in in some ways he's outside of society, right because
(23:29):
if this is what we increasingly continue to do we
indoctrinating another one another via our virtual internet presence. Then
if you're not in the yet, then you're operating outside
of society. Yeah. We've already looked at some commentary before
about how the newer generations the idea of private lives
(23:49):
has to varying degrees eroded. Uh, there's just more. They're
more comfortable by and large with the idea of just
living your life out there on the Internet where anyone
can see it. And so I can imagine a day
when it becomes the norm that you're also contributing to this, uh,
(24:09):
this panoficon structure through the information it's streaming through your
your glasses or whatever kind of a personal computing device
you're you're wearing, and then adding to the surveillance information
on the society you live in. Yeah, because I guess
the flip side on this is that, um, the more
data that's being put out there, the more transparency could occur. Right,
So I think the positive spin on this would be Okay,
(24:31):
So we're we are collecting an immense amount of data
about one another in society, but as a result, perhaps
we would have less corruption, we would have less ne'er
do well is Um, well, but Fuco would never say that. No, No,
I would never say that that is the that's what
the answer at the end of I know, I'm playing
Devil's advocate and saying it's someone on the other side
(24:52):
of this argument could say, Hey, there's there's a worth
in having this amount of data out there, and that
there's no way that everyone, all the corporations in the world,
all pulled together, could truly analyze the amount of data
that comes out of it. That's one argument. Yeah, it
all comes back to what you were saying earlier about
the idea that the Panopticon is the universe and the
(25:15):
inspector in the tower, in the Inspector's lodge is God.
What kind of God do you do you end up believing?
And do you believe in a benevolent God who wants
to keep an eye on us and make sure that
we're safe in our comfy selves. Is it just a
complete benign god that is just sort of watching as
we either live comfortably or are horribly beaten in ourselves,
(25:37):
or is it an oppressive God who is there to
make sure that we stay in this grim, dirty cell
and uh and our only moved according to his her
its whims. So that's the problem, um, is that there's
no one god in the situation. Right. Depending on where
you live and that the kind of culture you live
in and the politics surrounding it, you could have a
(25:57):
benevolent god or you could have a vengeful god. All right,
there you go, the Panopticon in a nutshell. Um. Before
we close out here, I'm gonna call over the mail
bot and I'm gonna do a quick listener mail. All right,
This one comes to us from Peter cron And uh,
who's a long time listener uh and as always hitting
us up with some cool links on our Facebook page
(26:19):
and writing us with some cool thoughts. And here's just
some some wonderful musings that he presented to us. He says, Hey,
there got something I was thinking about today that maybe
either of you to have thought about. I'm wondering about consciousness.
I was reading an article by Carl Zimmer which had
me thinking about what it would be like if our
massively connected world developed a real, next level consciousness that
it's individual components were mostly unaware of. Would this super
(26:43):
mind start probing itself like we do with our own brains,
Would it at first be as clumsy as our own
experiments before we understood our own biology a bit better.
I'm thinking that a probe might consist of something like
these microscopic fast financial dealings on Wall Street that we've
assumed we're traders using super conputers to manipulate the mark
could Some have said they could be experiments, but by
who How else might our new mind test its own boundaries.
(27:06):
It may just realize it's consciouness when other similar entities
arise from the ether of the Internet, or communicate somehow,
or it makes corss into taking to space exploration, drive
competition via heightened cybercrime, and espionage between countries based on
historical knowledge of how to fund these expensive ventures. I'm
sure there must be people already doing actual testing to
see if this thing is alive. Man, that just makes
(27:27):
me think of the whole conscious problem, like consciousness problem
that we've talked about, and how much more difficult that
would become. I think, right, if you're adding another layer
on a macro layer on top of our existing conundrum
of consciousness. Um, but maybe that's the consciousness that would
figure out our consciousness for us hopefully. Yeah, I mean,
you create this god you know, in a way it
(27:49):
ties in nicely with the idea of the panopticon. If
we it through something like this, if we were able
to either create or accidentally create or give birth to
a super consciousness that ends up more or less occupying
that center tower in the panopticon. Uh, you know, what
would the effects be and what would the nature of
that entity be? And how might it manipulate the prison
to maintain control or to maximize efficiency? And could it
(28:13):
be out at holographic eye in the sky for us
all just to look up in case upon Well, what
is that a reference to? I just think that it
should be if there's going to be the sort of
superconsciousness that it should be able to have these a
symbol of itself to be mount well, particularly if it's
going to truly occupy the place of a panopticon. Well,
(28:34):
that's like the eye of saurin right, and the Lord
of the Rings that floats over the the tower and
more door that's right now, it's really the eye of Providence. Yeah. Really,
there's another excellent example of panopticon right there. All right, So, hey,
you want to reach out to us, you want to
talk to us about the panopticon. We would love to
hear from you. I mean specifically, what are your thoughts
on the idea that we're living in a panopticon? Now,
(28:56):
do you feel like this? Do you feel this sort
of fear and paranoia it you? You may be observed
at all times? And how does that affect your behavior?
How does that affect your happiness level? Let us know
we'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at all the usual places, specially stuffed able your mind
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(29:16):
also find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Google Plus, remind
Stuff show on YouTube. And hey, if any of you
are in Cuba or ben to Cuba and have actually
visited the prison we were talking about earlier, let us
know what that was like. I've seen the photos and
they're amazing, but nothing beats a personal visit to something
like that. And if you should be so bold as
to craft an email that may or may not be
(29:37):
read by others besides Robert myself, you can do so
by sending it to blow the mind at discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it, how stuff works, dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie teas Julie listeners.
Imagine a vast circular prison. Okay, you with me, yes, Okay,
(00:25):
Now you step inside, and you'll find a curious arrangement
of the cells. Because most of this enclosed face is
exactly bad. It's empty space. The quicle cells line the
circumference of the inner walls. Uh, several stories worth in
fact in their bars, all face inward toward a lone
guard tower known as the Inspector's Lodge. Okay, Now, standing
within your prison cell, you can't see any of your
(00:45):
fellow cell mates, can't see any of the other cells.
All you can see is this tower, and you can't
see the inspector, that supposedly man's it due to a
mesh screen. But you know he's there. You know he's watching. Uh.
You know he's referencing a detailed map of which prisoner
occupies which cell, and you know that he listens in
as well. But of course, the inspector can only look
(01:07):
or listen to one cell at any given moment, right,
but you never know if his attention is turned to you,
so you have to assume at all times that he
might be listening to you. You have to avoid that
type to error and cognition. It's the only way to
deal with the endless uncertainty. It's safer to assume, right.
And besides that, you know that prisoners are regularly moved
to new cells based on good or bad behavior. So
(01:28):
I see that you have had a look inside my house.
Oh is this how you have your house arranged? Yeah?
So you're the inspector. What makes it really easy to
keep tabs on everybody? Yeah? So I think what you
have just described as something called the panopticon. Yes, And
we're going to talk about this today. We're going to
look at how spaces can have the power to liberate,
(01:49):
as we've talked about before with labyrinths, or they have
the power to oppress. And when you think about prison
and you think about prisoners, you think about anxiety, loneliness,
in vulnerability, and so this panopticon is really this idea
of these concentric circles closing in on us. Yeah. And
what's great about it is that it's not only this
(02:10):
this wonderful and then disturbing to varying levels design for
how we might use a physical space to have this
drastic effect on the human mind. But it also over
the years has been picked up as a philosophical idea,
as a metaphor that we apply to government, to internet culture,
you name it. I mean, you do a search for panopticon,
(02:31):
you will find people using it just about every uh
way they possibly can to criticize a given system of order, government, bureaucracy, etcetera. Well,
probably one of the oldest ways in which it's been
linked is this metaphor of the seeing eye of God, right,
particularly in Western culture, because when you're indoctrinated into Western culture,
(02:51):
you're indoctrinated this idea that there's this uh, this powerful
gaze and this powerful memory of a deity looking over
all of us. Yeah, he knows what you've been doing
when you're awake. Yeah, Santa Claus and God kind of
the kind of share the same space and in the
Western mindset, and and you're right to to to your point,
(03:12):
the idea of the inspector and the Inspector's lodge and
that tower at the center of the Penoptacon is very
much the idea of a god, but a but a
very uh, non personal god, a god that's all up
in your business. But also you have you have no
real clue as to what they look like, what they are,
what their their their ideas are regarding your fate in
(03:34):
this strange, strangely ordered prison. Well, this is a vengeful God.
And um, this is something that you know what came
out of the mind of a English utilitarian philosopher by
the name of Jeremy Bentham, who unveiled this architectural marvel,
these plans for this panoptic into the world. So as
you said, you know, let's revisit that again that we're
(03:56):
talking about two sets of concentric towers within the other,
with cells lining the outer wall, being visible to and
subject to regulation from the watcher the eye of God.
And those people they would live, they would eat, they
would sleep and work in these cells and what they
thought was constant surveillance. Now give you a little background
(04:19):
Jeremy Bentham with the eighteen thirty two again. He's a
British philosopher and and something of a political radical. He's
mainly known for the philosophy of utilitarianism, which elevates actions
based on their relevant consequences to the overall happiness of
everyone affected. And he had something of a hedonistic approach
to happiness, defining its simply as a matter of experiencing
pleasure and a lack of pain. Um. Now, when it
(04:42):
comes to his uh popticon, uh he, his approach to
it was, this is an overall good idea. He wasn't saying,
I have a great humanity crushing concept. I want to
they all in the world, you know, he was saying, Look,
prisons are a mess. We're in this. We're in the
midst of of of overall attempts to form our prisons
and make them more effective and make them less horrifying.
(05:04):
So here's one way we can do it, and we
can make it more cost effective and overall just more
effective as well. Because if you have a couple of
guards in a central tower watching over everyone, then you
don't have guards that are going, you know, on the
beat to every single cell and looking over right, so
you have less manpower that actually has to enforce this
(05:25):
feeling that you're being surveiled. Yeah, you end up with
four guards that you're to only two of which are
actually paid because you have the two guys, you know,
one guy maybe walking around. You have one guy in
the tower, and then you have fear and uncertainty, and
you don't have to pay for those because those guys
are are are summoned out of the very physicality of
the structure. Yeah, and it's actually compounded that this this
(05:46):
this fear by this idea of having those cells being illuminated,
but the observation tower actually being dark, so that the
prisoners could be observed all the time. They wouldn't be
able to tell when they were being observed, and so
the goal is for them to learn to act as
if they were constantly under surveillance. And the idea is
that once this uh, I guess you could call it
(06:08):
self discipline was instilled, that prisoners could be released into
society with the capacity to regulate their own behavior through paranoia.
Really and yeah and benthem, I mean he's not again,
he's not trying to be dastardly about this. He's sort
of thinking, this is the way that we can uh
(06:29):
manage the prison problem and reform the prisoner via paranoia exactly.
So originally he thought about this as a prison design,
but he also thought it was quote applicable to any
sort of establishment in which persons of any description are
to be kept under inspection. So we're talking about insane
asylums for houses. But this is where it gets into society. Factories, schools,
(06:53):
and hospitals. Yeah, I mean, without without getting into the
fine details of it, you can see where that would
that would make sense, and say a hospital where you
you want constant surveillance more or less of people's conditions,
or at the very least you want people to feel
like they're under constant care and surveillance, So that would
make sense. And obviously with the school situation, but sometimes
(07:16):
it feels like a school is very similar to a
prisoner insane asylum, and you have to have that kind
of order in place to make sure that everyone's doing
right and and obeying their the laws of the school,
not cheating on every test, not skipping classes. The problem
with us and we'll get more into this, uh in
a bit, is this inherent distrust right? Because Okay, you
(07:39):
see it extended to prisons, but factories, schools, and hospitals.
It's not necessarily just taking the form of hey, we're
just going to surveil and make sure everything is okay.
There's this idea that something is wrong. Someone somewhere is
doing something wrong. Right, Yeah, the whole system ends up
being predicated on guilt, and and it's him to Guildea.
(08:01):
All right, So what you're you're you're probably asking yourself.
You're saying, all right, well, where's the panopticon? Point to
the pen opticon, so I might see a picture of it. Uh,
And certainly there's some wonderful sketches of it, because I've
been to put a lot of thought and effort into
the designs. He worked with an architect. He was even
taught in talks to see his design implemented at one point.
But the Penopticon was never built in his lifetime. In fact,
(08:24):
no true panopticon prison was ever built another and no
one ever took his designs and said all right, I'm
gonna build this this thing that he designed. Part of
the problem here is that by the time surveillance technology
really caught up with his vision, you no longer need
that specific architecture to make it happen. Like once you
can actually wire every prison cell conceivably with video and audio.
(08:48):
If you've reached the point where you can do that,
you don't need this giant space with all this wasted
empty space between the cells and the tower. You can
just build a big, you know, farm of cubes and
then just wire it up right. Yeah, I mean it
is a huge cost, and politicians were interested, but they
weren't necessarily going to implement it. Yeah, and we see
this all the time even today. You know, you're always
finding stuff showing up in your your feed, your news feed,
(09:10):
or your Facebook feed where it's like some crazy design
that's going to innovate the way that we travel or
do business or live. And for the most part, you're
not going to see those designs implemented. Those represent the
extreme that under the best of situations will um you'll
see aspects of that implemented further down the chain, or
at least will draw um inspiration and innovation in that direction. Right.
(09:32):
But so it was never truly built, but it's still
influenced other prisons. Yes, And probably the best example that
we can we can find for this is a Cuba's
UH Presidio MODELO and this was built between n and
nine and it actually consists of five panopticon buildings, each
(09:52):
designed to hold prisoners. So these are five buildings UH
cells lining the inside of the the outer walls, and
then there's a tower in the center where the guards
would be able to watch everyone. And uh, you know it,
it operated, it was functional, and you actually saw some
some star prisoners there. I Fidel Castro was a prisoner
there during the rebellion and uh, but of course, then
(10:14):
after his rise to power, you see the thing just
stuffed with political prisoners, um, homosexuals, Jeovah's witnesses, counter revolutionaries,
various enemies of the state, and so the population quickly
skyrockets to six thousand inmates. Now, of course, that's the
thing about prisons. If they're built to contain a certain
number of people. Um, if you overstuffed them, you're gonna
(10:36):
overload any system, You're gonna overload the wiring of the prison.
And that's exactly what happened, you that you have overcrowding
at least riots in nineteen sixty one, and then it
was permanently closed by the government in nineteen sixty six.
Today it's a museum and I think there's a school
there and also some some offices. But for the most
part you can you can still find pictures of this
online and and you can visit it if you're in Cuba,
(10:57):
and it's a it's really remarkable to look at because
is it's the idea of the panopticon brought to physical life.
I wanted to point out a quote by Architects, Designers
Planners for Social Responsibility that's a d p s R.
There is an essay on this about prisons and panopticon,
and the quote is the best intention. Reformist designs have
(11:20):
believed that more complete control of prisoners through design would
be used only to further higher goals such as religious
awakenings and in a reflection, but in fact control is
an end in itself, and prisons just recreate the powerlessness
of the member of poor and oppressed groups under even
stricter rules than they face on the outside. That was
(11:42):
something interesting to ponder just in general. Not you know,
the panopticon is really this idealized version of power and control.
But the prison system as it exists right now, Um,
there are many people who would say that it doesn't work,
it doesn't reform. I agree, I agree, And that's that's
definitely a subject for another episode. We could do a
whole episode on the state of prisons and and the
(12:05):
mindset that goes into prison designs. Overall and just let
the philosophy that goes into an house change over time. Indeed,
so let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
we are going to look more at this panopticon from
the perspective of Michelle fel Cole. All right, we're back.
(12:27):
So yes, Uh, that's the best example of the panopticon
physically that we have. And you do see uh panopticonic
elements incorporated into various other prison designs. But for the
most part, where panopticon continues to have the most power
today is as metaphor. That's right. And uh, that's why
I wanted to bring up that quote by the A. D.
(12:48):
Spr because Michelle Fockle is a French philosopher who brought
up the panopticon as this idea of a metaphor of
our society. That disciplinary systems are prisons in particular, with
a panopticon is the ideal type there they can be
social failures. Yeah, fo Call's picture of modern disciplinary society
(13:11):
breaks into three primary techniques that governmental powers used to
control the masses. That's hierarchical observation, normalizing, judgment, and examination.
Now and where this panopticon enters into all that is
that according to focal power over people can can be
achieved merely by observing them. So it's like with the panopticon.
(13:33):
But the deal is that a single inspector would be impossible, right,
especially when you're talking about governmental power, So you need
relays of inspectors. You need all of them arrange in
a hierarchy so that data can pass up and down
the chain based on importance. And in all of this
fool focusing on society's modern transition from a quote culture
of spectacle to make our sero or prison culture. Now
(13:55):
this gets into the idea that what happened when you
broke the law in the old days, and like really
broke it, like broke it hard, you would be made
spectacle of right, And that's what he says. He says
that this is a quote for him. By the effect
of backlighting, one can observe from the tower standing out
precisely against the light, the small captive shadows, and the
cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages,
(14:15):
so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone,
perfectly individualized and constantly visible. So he's saying that this
stage that the has been reversed, that the audience is
now in the cells, and the actor, the performer, is
that that watch person looking over everybody else, and it
still remains too spectacle. Really, Yeah, a reversal of the
(14:39):
old days where everyone will be gathered around the guillotine
or the heads of his block, or the or the
news or what have you. So, yeah, and within those
three points that you had made, the hierarchical distribution of information,
examination of the information, but also normalizing. This is a
really important aspect of this, and this is what a
lot of people run with when they look at our
society today, look at the different ways that panopticon can
(15:02):
exist in different formats. So what call has to say
about normalizing, he says, Hence the major effect of the
panopticon to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in
its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action. Again,
(15:24):
this is sort of going back to what Bentham was
really saying, is trying to instill that paranoia that you're
being watched even if you're not being watched. Yeah, they
might be watching me. So therefore there's this always feeling,
there's always this feeling that kind of evens out that
they are watching me. Yeah, and I'll just skip ahead.
In this quote, he says, in short, that the inmates
should be caught up in a power situation of which
(15:45):
they are themselves the bearer. So they are the bearer
of this, and it's this normalization of always being under
the gaze. And this is what call had a problem
with because he said that again, it's not just limited
to prison design. It's a meta for for all types
of different social organizations and structure, schools, factories, and governments
now perdue universities. Dino Feluga breaks down the effects of
(16:08):
pen optic organizational models into into seven overall effects, and
I think these are pretty interesting. This again is his
view and his commentary on focals philosophy. Number One, society
becomes less willing to contest unjust laws, like everyone's under
the gaze of the observer, and so therefore, even if
the law seemed to becoming becoming unjust, you're less likely
(16:29):
to speak out of them, because the gaze is in
theory on everyone uh. Number two, rehabilitation rather than crueler
and unusual punishment. So again we talked about that it
becomes more about the prison system rather than the spectacle. Uh.
Then there's birth of an information society. You become more
and more dependent on technology and record keeping. Uh. You
(16:49):
have a bureaucracy of information in which people become numbers
because again you're having to keep track of everybody and
keep track of everything. And this is the panoptic system.
Efficiency becomes more and more important, even at the cost
of exploitation or injustice. And finally, a specialization. Members of
the workforce are organized into increasingly specialized fields so that
we increasingly rely on other experts to complete tasks that
(17:12):
had previously been shared or common knowledge, so that you know,
we're talking to the preparation of meats and other food products, building, construction, transportation, etcetera.
His idea here is that with the panopticon, it kind
of breeds bureaucracy, and bureau bureaucracy is the uh is
the brick and mortar of the governmental Uh penopticon to
(17:33):
power panopticon. Uh, that that is society. Yeah, and these
these unwritten rules, UM, and this idea that you're being surveiled,
this idea that it's all normal. Right, you can start
to look around and as people have done, particularly at
the drone situation, and say, okay, so what about the
pentopticon and modern society. We'll start to think about how
(17:55):
the Pentagon has scores of communication satellites, many of them
for link drones, grand roots and imagery analysts. There are
some seven thousand aerial drones compared with fear than fifty
a decade ago. Now consider that we increasingly have something else,
spy flies which were equipped with sensors of micro cameras,
and the fact that since September eleven, uh the hours
(18:17):
the Air Force devotes to flying missions for intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance have gone up three thousand, one hundred percent.
And everyday the Air Force processes fifteen hundred hours of
full motion videos and in the fifteen hundred still images,
a lot of it from the predator drones and reapers.
So that's one tiny aspect of surveilling power that exists
(18:40):
in the world today, and of course, in the in
the past few months, the n s A has been
all over the headlines for both its domestic surveillance programs
and its international surveillance programs and uh and that of
course is a really hot button topic as well, with
critics charging of the NSA not only infringes on our privacy,
but lays the technological groundwork for a true police state.
(19:01):
And it's really just part of an overall poptic um
structure on society. Yeah, and the problem there is that
legislation cannot keep up with technological advances. So you have
these sort of things being rolled out and if they
are challenged, and then takes a while to actually get
that policy in place or that law in place to
(19:22):
sort of balance out what sort of surveilling power is
needed to run a government versus what just becomes overwhelming
and and there's a huge debate about that right now. Um.
The other thing is that in a way, every time
you use the Internet, you are willingly submitting yourself to
(19:44):
this penopticon. I mean you think about the humble cookie, right,
I mean you're talking about this tiny, little omniscient tendril
of the Internet that gathering information about you. It's recording
your Internet browsing habits, and it's reporting them to a
business that you know nothing about. So in a way,
the corporation becomes the tower you know, the central tower
(20:09):
with the watchman, and we are in those little cubicles
surrounding it with all of our information being passed on.
And I'm not trying to be dramatic about it. It's
just if you really want to look at this system,
this panoptic system, and look at it in the digital sphere,
that's an essence how it's working. Yeah. Like I think
of browsing the Internet at work, which I mean in
(20:30):
some places of work, that's that's already breaking the rules.
Here we do a lot of Internet research, so it's
it's part of our job. But but every time we
we conduct a search and go to a website here
at work, there are like several layers of potential panopticonic
thinking going on. First of all, all right, the cookies
that are talking to my Facebook and to me into
(20:52):
this site and this site. You know what to what
degree am I being watched there? The side I just
went to. All right, all these different corporations just found
out about it. Uh, next time using a work machine
on a work Internet connection. I know that they have
certain systems in place. I don't know the details of
them or how they work, but I know that they
can slash our, you know, observing what I'm doing on
(21:16):
my machine and uh and so it eventually becomes this
situation of you you feel like you're observed all the time,
and what are you comfortable being observed doing? You know,
you end up rationalizing like, all right, I'm going to
this website. I'm clearly going here for research. I have
a good excuse when the inspector leaves the tower and
comes to get me, like like, that's the kind of
(21:37):
weird thinking you're you're left in because you assume you're
being watched. Now, to add to this um are other
technological chats, advancements, however you want to swing it. I'm
thinking about Google Glass because here some people would say, okay,
here's this thing that is recording not only audio, but
video of everything that's going around them. So now we
(22:01):
have this idea of the panopticon as us gathering information
about one another. And this does sound a little bit paranoid,
but I think that the crux of this argument is
if and when everyone is wearing Google Glass, then it
becomes normalizing behavior to surveil people even though you're not.
(22:21):
You wouldn't call it surveiling. You know, your co workers
or your friends, but you are gathering data about them,
and essentially there is a third party that is using
that data in some way and linking it up with
other data. And we've talked about facial recognition systems, or
it's just a different layers that can be put together
to put to create really a profile of a person
(22:44):
and try to predict their behavior and what they're doing
and buying and engaging in. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
already crazy. Where to the point where you put a
photo up on Facebook, Like, for instance, I'll put a
photo up of me and my wife and our child,
and the Facebook will say, hey, look at the face
of your wife. Do you want to identify this? We
(23:06):
know who this is. Facebook knows who it is. And
then they pointed that the face of of our child,
and and Facebook says, who is this? Tell us who
this is? Tag them now? And I say, you don't.
You don't have him yet, not wait, And I'm sure
he'll be on there, but for now, he's he's outside
of your system, he's outside of your panopticon, right. Well,
in in some ways he's outside of society, right because
(23:29):
if this is what we increasingly continue to do we
indoctrinating another one another via our virtual internet presence. Then
if you're not in the yet, then you're operating outside
of society. Yeah. We've already looked at some commentary before
about how the newer generations the idea of private lives
(23:49):
has to varying degrees eroded. Uh, there's just more. They're
more comfortable by and large with the idea of just
living your life out there on the Internet where anyone
can see it. And so I can imagine a day
when it becomes the norm that you're also contributing to this, uh,
(24:09):
this panoficon structure through the information it's streaming through your
your glasses or whatever kind of a personal computing device
you're you're wearing, and then adding to the surveillance information
on the society you live in. Yeah, because I guess
the flip side on this is that, um, the more
data that's being put out there, the more transparency could occur. Right,
So I think the positive spin on this would be Okay,
(24:31):
So we're we are collecting an immense amount of data
about one another in society, but as a result, perhaps
we would have less corruption, we would have less ne'er
do well is Um, well, but Fuco would never say that. No, No,
I would never say that that is the that's what
the answer at the end of I know, I'm playing
Devil's advocate and saying it's someone on the other side
(24:52):
of this argument could say, Hey, there's there's a worth
in having this amount of data out there, and that
there's no way that everyone, all the corporations in the world,
all pulled together, could truly analyze the amount of data
that comes out of it. That's one argument. Yeah, it
all comes back to what you were saying earlier about
the idea that the Panopticon is the universe and the
(25:15):
inspector in the tower, in the Inspector's lodge is God.
What kind of God do you do you end up believing?
And do you believe in a benevolent God who wants
to keep an eye on us and make sure that
we're safe in our comfy selves. Is it just a
complete benign god that is just sort of watching as
we either live comfortably or are horribly beaten in ourselves,
(25:37):
or is it an oppressive God who is there to
make sure that we stay in this grim, dirty cell
and uh and our only moved according to his her
its whims. So that's the problem, um, is that there's
no one god in the situation. Right. Depending on where
you live and that the kind of culture you live
in and the politics surrounding it, you could have a
(25:57):
benevolent god or you could have a vengeful god. All right,
there you go, the Panopticon in a nutshell. Um. Before
we close out here, I'm gonna call over the mail
bot and I'm gonna do a quick listener mail. All right,
This one comes to us from Peter cron And uh,
who's a long time listener uh and as always hitting
us up with some cool links on our Facebook page
(26:19):
and writing us with some cool thoughts. And here's just
some some wonderful musings that he presented to us. He says, Hey,
there got something I was thinking about today that maybe
either of you to have thought about. I'm wondering about consciousness.
I was reading an article by Carl Zimmer which had
me thinking about what it would be like if our
massively connected world developed a real, next level consciousness that
it's individual components were mostly unaware of. Would this super
(26:43):
mind start probing itself like we do with our own brains,
Would it at first be as clumsy as our own
experiments before we understood our own biology a bit better.
I'm thinking that a probe might consist of something like
these microscopic fast financial dealings on Wall Street that we've
assumed we're traders using super conputers to manipulate the mark
could Some have said they could be experiments, but by
who How else might our new mind test its own boundaries.
(27:06):
It may just realize it's consciouness when other similar entities
arise from the ether of the Internet, or communicate somehow,
or it makes corss into taking to space exploration, drive
competition via heightened cybercrime, and espionage between countries based on
historical knowledge of how to fund these expensive ventures. I'm
sure there must be people already doing actual testing to
see if this thing is alive. Man, that just makes
(27:27):
me think of the whole conscious problem, like consciousness problem
that we've talked about, and how much more difficult that
would become. I think, right, if you're adding another layer
on a macro layer on top of our existing conundrum
of consciousness. Um, but maybe that's the consciousness that would
figure out our consciousness for us hopefully. Yeah, I mean,
you create this god you know, in a way it
(27:49):
ties in nicely with the idea of the panopticon. If
we it through something like this, if we were able
to either create or accidentally create or give birth to
a super consciousness that ends up more or less occupying
that center tower in the panopticon. Uh, you know, what
would the effects be and what would the nature of
that entity be? And how might it manipulate the prison
to maintain control or to maximize efficiency? And could it
(28:13):
be out at holographic eye in the sky for us
all just to look up in case upon Well, what
is that a reference to? I just think that it
should be if there's going to be the sort of
superconsciousness that it should be able to have these a
symbol of itself to be mount well, particularly if it's
going to truly occupy the place of a panopticon. Well,
(28:34):
that's like the eye of saurin right, and the Lord
of the Rings that floats over the the tower and
more door that's right now, it's really the eye of Providence. Yeah. Really,
there's another excellent example of panopticon right there. All right, So, hey,
you want to reach out to us, you want to
talk to us about the panopticon. We would love to
hear from you. I mean specifically, what are your thoughts
on the idea that we're living in a panopticon? Now,
(28:56):
do you feel like this? Do you feel this sort
of fear and paranoia it you? You may be observed
at all times? And how does that affect your behavior?
How does that affect your happiness level? Let us know
we'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at all the usual places, specially stuffed able your mind
dot com. That's the mothership, that's where all the podcast
episodes are, the blog post, the videos, etcetera. You can
(29:16):
also find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Google Plus, remind
Stuff show on YouTube. And hey, if any of you
are in Cuba or ben to Cuba and have actually
visited the prison we were talking about earlier, let us
know what that was like. I've seen the photos and
they're amazing, but nothing beats a personal visit to something
like that. And if you should be so bold as
to craft an email that may or may not be
(29:37):
read by others besides Robert myself, you can do so
by sending it to blow the mind at discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it, how stuff works, dot com
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