Hybrid text

I.

"What would you do?" is an American television program. In the series, actors act out scenes of conflict or illegal activity in public settings while hidden cameras videotape the scene, and the focus is on whether or not bystanders intervene, and how. Variations are also usually included, such as changing the genders, the races or the clothing of the actors performing the scene, to see if bystanders react differently. Director appears at the end to interview the bystanders about their reactions. As the experiment goes on, psychology professors, teachers, or club members watch and discuss the video with, director explaining and making inferences on the bystanders' reactions. This program is reminds me Foucault's control of society, director is controlling everything that in the show and he is also controlling the viewers. To illustrate this argument, I would like to give an example from the show. In the program there is one scenario, a woman going to supermarket to buy food and wipes for her baby but she does not have enough money to pay it at the cashier, case is, are these people in the supermarket will help her or not. The people's behavior will change in a while, who is watching to this program. Because when they encounter the problem like this in their life, they will remind this program then they will self regulate themselves just like Foucault said. This will be exemplifying to the audiences and teach them how to act when they are in similar situation.

In the documentary movie that we watched, We live in Public. We can read this movie from perspective of Foucault. It is really similar to what Foucault says about control of societies and disciplinary societies. We can take a look to Josh's social experiment Capsule hotel; in this hotel they just accept voluntaries. They can do whatever they want( this is the theory but we see Josh is controlling everything and decides what they can do, there is no freedom in my opinion) free food, sex, gun, party. At the beginning of the program it is going well but afterwards it is becoming mix of school, military. We remind these two institutes from Foucault's disciplinary societies. He says, authority is disciplining the society through these institutes such as school, military, hospital, and prison. In the Capsule hotel we see integration rooms where these people being training from psychologist in Josh's way. There are a lot of screens and cameras, they are recording everything that is happening in this place, it is small version of the control society. When I see the name of this documentary, I also started to think about, Facebook, Instagram, web cameras, smart phones, and history of our computers. I would like to begin with Facebook, actually before the Facebook if someone ask me to share my whole life to everyone, what I am eating now, my relationship, my interest, my, my, my ... I would say you must be insane why I would do that. But now we really live in Public and this is our decision, Internet is served us as a freedom where you do whatever you want but this became participatory 'surveillance'. Web cameras, phone cameras, we take photographs, video with them but where they are going? Even when you deleted it you can still recover it. As you can remember, hackers got hacked to Icloud database and got a lot of photographs of famous people then they shared all these private photos. We shouldn't be surprise about it, when you accept all these terms and conditions you must be open for it. For instance, when you search renting house on the Internet, you will get housing ads on your Facebook newsfeed or the webpages that you visit. There is no real protection in the Internet. Do we want protection? I am not sure, because we sign up for this social media sites this with our free will. Computers, smart phones are also collecting our photos, messages, acts, and web browser histories.

Your telephone is saving your locations, for example in US they arrested one guy from killing his roommate. Apple help them to solve this case, shared his locations and his history of Siri, suspect asked the Siri "where are the swamps nearby", police used this as an evidence in this case. When you use certain words you will be add to watch list. What is that mean? Somebody is watching us on the Internet or not. Maybe it is not true or not. But the power of the "Controller" is secured by the paranoia of ours. If you have nothing to hide you don't need to hide. In Foucault's panopticon example, there is an order in it, Surveillance, Discipline, Ranking, Self-regulation to understand this situation. In my opinion, we can also add Internet and television beside the Foucault's mechanisms of training to disciplinary to society. Because when Foucault wrote this text television and Internet not really part of our life, however these are our life not part of it.

II.

Every person in the system has a role to play. We have to work or study continuously in order to maintain to our status. And, if anyone wants to improve to his/her situation, he/she can follow certain established pats in order to meet more social and economic success. We have learned this from school, right? How we can act in the classroom, in the public spaces, etc. Our behaviors' training is starting at the school. But now, a time is not same after 20 years. Training is beginning earlier than school, with new technology it begins with children from 2-3 years old within new devices tablets and computers. New technology came up with an idea; you are free to choose, free to watch, free to learn. However, it is in the space that this power draws the boundaries. Authority is always refreshing itself and finds new ways to maintain itself trough different tools. With this unreal freedom also reminds me concept of Jean Baudlliard's "Simulation and Simulacra" " Real can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore."