The Panopticon

The picture you see adorning my background, and making up the outline of my logo is, of course Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon.

The idea is derived from Bentham's design for a prison that allowed each individual inmate to be observed without ever knowing they were being watched. Bentham was inspired by his brother Samuel's design of a military school in Paris that allowed easy supervision of the students. The design inspired a number of prisons as displayed below.

Chi Hoa in Vietnam

Carbanchel in Madrid

Bentham described The Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Our society is continually evolving to represent a panopticon as we are continually under surveillance from video cameras, chips in our credit cards logging each purchase. But to what extent are we complicit in these forms of surveillance?