The development of the photograph and how it lead to surveillance we have today was something this chapter I specifically was interested in. The book talks about the Panopitcon Penitentiary and basically how the prisoners “self regulated” themselves because they didn’t know when they were being watched so they were always on their best behavior. Today we all kind of live in a Panopitcon Penitentiary by the surveillance that is brought upon us today. From security cameras in convenient stores, cameras at stop lights to even the fairly new Patriot Act it is all a type of surveillance on society. What this does to society is almost force people to behave “properly” at all times and constantly wonder if you are actually being watched.
I recently saw a T.V. called Hard Time that goes around to America’s most “notorious” prisons that interviews guards, wardens and even prisoners on how they act/like the prison life there. I forget where this prison is located but they went to it and the photo the above is a picture of the inside. They claim the most brutal of their inmates go there. The guards claim that the prison can hold up to 800 inmates and they only need about 9 guards to control them all because of the prisons setup. As you can see, the guard tower has huge flood lights that shine 360 degrees so the inmates don’t know whether they are being watched or not. The guards that were interviewed seemed very happy with how the prison set up worked and claimed their job is easier/safer because of the Panopitcon structure.
Another point I found interesting was Modernity because it is something I’m pretty familiar with from my Science and Technology in Society class. The class, along with this chapter talks about how the Industrial Revolution (in particular) dehumanized the people who worked in the factories and who lived in the urban setting. The picture of Charlie Chaplin in his movie Modern Times on page 100 is a pretty powerful picture about the Industrial Revolution era. It pretty much illustrates how people are actually controlled by machines (the factories) rather than the workers controlling them. It goes further than the workers just being controlled in the factories but even when they were out of the factory. For example, families where getting smaller (compared to suburban/rural families) due to the fact that children weren’t needed to help labor like they did in farming families. Also, the factories took away all “specialization” which left the workers feeling unsatisfied in their work by doing the same thing over and over again for hours on end (assembly lines, etc.) The machines "eating" Charlie Chaplin is visually communicating the oppression the Industrial Revolutionary era had on the working class.
Those were the two main things that caught my eye in this chapter. The fact that surveillance is what it is today can only make me wonder how it will be in 10 years. Will we have to get our finger print scanned to get on airplanes? Our retina scanned through our macbook's camera to buy things online using a credit card? When will the time come when not just movie star's mansions have video cameras around them, but normal middle class homes have their own surveillance systems?
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