User:Mihail Bakalov/Trimerster 1/READING, WRITING AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES/Draft Essay1

The idea that Foucault presents with the panopticon is that of an architecture holding people and limiting their freedom which is no longer built simply to be seen, but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control - to render visible those who are inside it; an architecture that would operate to transform the others.

Nowadays the system of control is hidden and no more has an ugly look. Its being disguesed behind nice guys and people are mismerised by the functions that the system provides. But where does this lead? If the information for every daily procegure we reachable for the good guys in control, why are we loking it with passwords, face and finger detection? Is there a real possibility that good guys can be in charge? Could the system of control be good in anyway to humankind? The participatory surveillance/capitalism system to which we offer our lives to. In order to go through our daily prosigeours we go through the system. So we just put up with this invasion of our privacy. The excuse to the invasion of our privacy is to providing better services. Through our performing we keep the system running. We live in it, we live through it, we give live to it. Big brother is every where.

The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws: first the family; then the school; then the barracks; then the factory; from time to time the hospital; possibly the prison (Deleuze|1992)

The control via power through informational interchanges controls peoples access of information and encapsulates of people in facilities. The distribution of power is implemented in the structures. So anyone within such a structure knows where they stand, who has power over them, and their behavior will be influenced by knowledge of and participation within the structure. We are contributing to the flow of data. The flow of data is free although the way it goes is design.

The first idea of the disciplined societies which afterwards mutated into the control society was less fluid. It devided and isolated and uses simple instruments like hierarchical observation and normalizing judgement. Its all about placing physical connection with the system. The architecture of the panopticon is simple, a building in the shape of a donut with a watch tower in the middle for surveillance. The effect of the surveillance is a total change in the behavior of people. This behavior of being watch internalizes and contributes to the subject formation. The utilitarian point of view makes sence of this system as to make us more efficient, trying to makes think that this subject normalization is at our best. In order to better participate in society we should reform our selfs. An example for power and disciplined behaviour.

In a disciplinary regime individualization is descending: as [pwer becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercied by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation rathen than by commenmorative accounts, by comparative measures that have the 'norm' as reference rather than genealogies giving ancestors as points f reference; by gaps rather than by deeds. (Foucault|1975)

During the classical age the punishment is through injury and mutilation. Behavior is modified by punishment. Afterwards the XVIII century the system evolves and reforms subjectivity, through discipline, training, work. Foucault presents in “Discipline and Punish” how the training of discipline utilizes the body to sustain power. Efficiency is gained through a codification of space and time. Which in return shapes subjectivity and determines ranking. Bio power refers to the same distribution of bodies in space and time. The body is no longer 'subject' to the will of a ruler but enters a disciplinary system where surveillance, time and space ranking and self regulations are the key element. If a person is more pliable the more he is trained to follow the system and get less resistance in this environment. Nevertheless: our individuality is constructed by it. The individual is born in the society and is defined by it. Where is the individual in this disciplinary system? If we are a product of the system,where is our own self? We are programmed into giving up on subjectivity for our own interest. Power remains, continuity the function of discipline in society is to train observation-surveillance normalization/judgment examination (classification, punishment, diagnose). Deleuze talks about control societies in 'Immaterial Labor' which implemennt the celebrity- neoliberal structure, where the performing subject and its performance is essential to get visibility while become commodity.

Perhaps it is money that expresses the distinction between the two societies best, since discipline always referred back to minted money that locks gold as numerical standard, while control relates to floating rates of exchange, modulated according to a rate established by a set of standard currencies. (Deleuze|1992)

The super panopticon much smarter than its predesecer. As the new system seems to be much difference it uses the same method of discipline and training but is hiden in code which is embeded in the infrastructure and is modified to fit and record all the actions performed by the user. This affects the meaning and purpose of records and the use of them. As Deleuze points out if the most idiotic television game shows are so successful, it's because they express the corporate situation with great precision.

The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network. (Deleuze|1992)

The control society connects the signature that designates the individual and the number or administrative numeration that point out persons position within a mass. The new environment transform the individual where he is put up to work responsibility for his own self-regulation. It is the worker now that is integrated into the company/factory. What has happened is that a new "mass intellectuality" has come into being, created out of a combination of the demands of capitalist production and the forms of "self-valorization" that the struggle against work has produced. The split between labor and creativity, between author and audience, is simultaneously transcended within the "labor process" and reimposed as political command within the "process of valorization."