Research paper published in the Journal of Innovative Ethics
The Panopticon Factor: Privacy and Surveillance in the Digital Age
This paper questions the use of new technologies as tools of modern surveillance in order to advance the research done by Michel Foucault on panoptic techniques of surveillance and dominance; and give new insights on the way we use these new surveillance technologies in violation of democratic principles and legal norms. Furthermore it offers new arguments in support of Foucault's account on the expansion of Bentham's Panopticon scheme as universal model of modern day democratic institutions. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the various ways the deployment of new technologies reinforces the Panopticon model; and analyze the effects produced by the emerging modes of surveillance that empower various new mechanisms of domination and control of individuals. This research paper seeks to examine to what extent technology influences the course of our social, political and behavioral changes; and propose a framework for evaluation and transformation of democratic institutions and practices that rely on the use of modern communication tools and technologies. Our cities have become a new kind of technologically driven Panopticon and this model has achieved perfection as increasingly fragmented, disseminated and ubiquitous device of power and dominance.
Keywords: Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, surveillance, body, power, knowledge, technologies of power, governmentality, technologies of the self, biopower, democracy
