Future Hi: The Death of the Panopticon Society

May 15, 2005

The Death of the Panopticon Society

Several people I know have recently brought their concern up that we are approaching a time soon when we will all be under surveillance, and that this will create an oppressive society. This certainly seems true if you've read Orwell's 1984. About a year and half ago, on my old blog Planet P, I posted this, my first and only audio blog, in response to these fears about why I think that type of oppression is not sustainable in a rapid decentralizing world.

Paul Hughes - The Death of the Panopticon Society.mp3 (Rigth Click to Save)

Now that Future Hi has a lot more bandwidth, if you'd like to hear more audio entries, please let us know.

Posted by paul at May 15, 2005 11:12 AM

Comments

I still think its sustainable. Jail will largely be unnecessary when everyone is under virtual house-arrest. Sanctions will likely come in the form of denial of credit, wage garnishing, travel restrictions, limits on what you can purchase or own, who you are allowed to associate with before your punishment reaches a higher threshold and you're GPS located and tagged for police intercept. The super-rich are already immune from these things and will continue to be, with their teams of lawyers and contracted security details, political payoffs, and investments in the virtual Panopticon's prison-industrial complex.
Have hackers gone after the Warren Buffett's and George Soros' of this world? Even political figures are surprisingly immune or not prone to such impositions, currently, while the Paris Hilton's and Fred Dursts' in the spotlight get their cell-phones hacked, and computers infiltrated. These sacrificial lambs become a relief valve of dissent, as sophomoric as it may seem at times.

As much as I'd like you to be right, can we afford to take that chance by not acting and preparing now for the possible future? I don't think for a moment your scenario hasn't already been considered and had contingency plans developed to sustain such a house of cards against these outside pressures.

Its funny, because I'd just started a discussion with John Harrigan over at FoolishPeople.com about this. I'll forward you the email, Paul.

Posted by: sauceruney at May 15, 2005 01:37 PM

Thanks Chris for the thoughtful reply.

The panopticon society is not sustainable in an open system. Closed systems like entropy itself only exist as abstractions. Can you think of any system anywhere in the universe that is in fact closed? Even the universe itself, based on the latest cosmological discoveries, is appearing to be open and flat.

The rapid pace of accelerating change is at such a point now, that the decentralized forces of networked intelligence are moving ahead faster than the old power structures centralized response. We are seeing an increase in central power only in response to an asynchronous greater increase of decentralized power.

No society or culture exist in a vacuum anymore (i.e. closed) - everything is becomgin more interconnected and in turn more competive than ever. Any part of the system that is more open will be default outcompete any closed part of the system. Capital has always favored liberty over tyranny. China has tried very hard to defy this basic principle, and the end result is their society is becoming more open by the day - which is saying something in lieu of a basic stagnation of having a 6000 year old culture continuity.

The modern world in turn is very new and globally speaking unstable and most in flux. Despite all the forces leading toward this panopticon, the countering forces of extropy, decentralized network intelligence (parallel processing out competes centralized processing - go ask Google - :) ), and grass-roots capitalism is moving forward. The so-called "sham" economies of the rising eastern bloc are attaining levels of prosperity at a furious rate without any of the hangups of intellectual property.

Therefor those societies that have the least restrictions by definition will have the most capital investment, regardless of what old-fashioned uptight and traditional investors might think. Think about it, despite China's flagrant disregard for intellectual property theft, bill gates and ilk STILL do business with them. Again, its a matter of the REAL economy of wealth vesus a fictional economy they want to control. Nobody can control it - that's the point. The very point of our times, is everything is becoming more out of control more every day.

Sure, there WILL be pockets of panopticon oppression, most likely here in the states, and in places like Britain and possibly Japan, but only to their everlasting demise as super-powers. Their refusal to "go with the flow" of this rising global extropy, will sow the seeds of their own destruction - and maybe, as I think, this in the end is a good thing.

Paul

Posted by: Paul at May 15, 2005 02:22 PM

I already feel like I am being watched at all times. I've stopped using my bank account and now everything is cash.

Posted by: Alexa at May 16, 2005 03:01 PM

I haven't yet listened to your audio blog but I'll comment off the top of my head. I've heard some pretty good arguments that 1) privacy is inevitably going to disappear in the age of global networks and, 2) what we need to seek is greater transparency across the board so that all individuals and institutions are equally known. Not sure exactly how I feel about it but...

I'm sure I'll have more to say about it after I listen to your post Paul.

Posted by: lvx23 at May 16, 2005 10:52 PM

I'm with some of the other posters on this...I hope you're correct, Paul--but who knows what sort of Orwellian surprises the T.S.O.G. has planned for "the little guy and gal".

I'm hopeful that things won't devolve to R.A.W.'s scenario of Nth degrees of secret police and everyone spying on each other--but it seems to still remain a possibility.

Posted by: Sly Stoner at May 17, 2005 12:47 PM

Howdy,

I'm not saying it won't happen, only that such a system is unsustainable. No, it will happen. They will install cameras on every street. They will make every effort to monitor every move we make. They will create an quasi-omniscient surveillance apparatus. All this will likely to come to pass.

What I am saying is that such a system is unsustainable. All it will take is one pocket somewhere to have less of it, and that is exactly where the capital will go, and in turn further evolution towards greater degrees of freedom. Capital abhors tyranny and escapes it as fast as walls are erected. And since the ultimate baseline reality is bio-economic, the economics will always favor the system that has the least restrictions to that capital, regardless of mega-corporations and governments attempts to stop it.

Although the surviellance may not vanish, what WILL vanish are the petty laws of power and control that go along with it. When everyone is beng monitored and policed, it will create a society that crushes innovation and capital investment. Capital will flee such systems very rapidly (at the speed of light along optical digital networks) to places where it has no such restrictions. In places where the best and the brightes are REWARDED and treated right, is exactly where they will go, and where the money will go. They will move ahead economically and in turn politically while the rest of the panoption sectors rot in thier own oppression.

History supports this again, again and again. Berlin Wall anyone? Easy Germany vs West Germany?

The reason I think this time people are having a difficult time seeing it is because they are immersed in western cultures and *assume* they are the most free. The truth is they are rapidly becoming less free, and their superpower status is riding more on momentym these days than actual progress. Nope, places like India and the Eastern Bloc are playing catch up and fast. Expect some interesting developments to come out of places like Brazil and China too. China cannot remain oppressive for much longer.

It's going to be an interesting coming 10 years, but one thing is for certain, panopticon states are doomed in the larger global movement towards extropy.

Posted by: Paul at May 17, 2005 03:22 PM

I am afraid that we are heading towards there. I have just seen in a documentary that surveilance cameras in a store, are not only used for security but also to track the consumer's behaviour in order to improve marketing.
Regarding audio blogs, personally I don't like really them. In general I prefer written texts, you can dig out the really interesting information from a text by just having a quick look over it, and then insisting on the most interesting parts. On the other hand audio is so linear, you cannot skip anything and in the same time you cannot really concretrate into something. This my personal view, regarding the text vs audio issue, I think however that I am with the minority.

Posted by: nw at May 18, 2005 05:41 AM

Life Beyond the Panopticon: Embracing Transformation

Brian Bogart
IntelligentFuture

For those who sense a coming collision between “normal” and reality, for those who feel anxiety when they ponder momentous change, take heart from this letter, find courage to fly, for it is freedom — real freedom — that awaits.

To understand our potential, we must comprehend our captivity. Our society is not a normal (healthy, nurturing, appropriate) place for living and evolving; it is a destructive and difficult environment. In books of ancient wisdom, there are levels of evolution. Nothing complex or hierarchical, just a simple formula.

In "The Tao of Pooh," Benjamin Hoff writes:

"It starts when we are children, helpless but aware of things, enjoying what is around us. Then we reach adolescence, still helpless but trying to outgrow that stage, we become adults — self-sufficient individuals able and mature enough to help others as we have learned to help ourselves.

"But the adult is not the highest stage of development. The end of the cycle is that of the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child. That is the level known as wisdom. When the Tao Te Ching and other wise books say things like, 'Return to the beginning; become a child again,' that's what they're referring to. Why do the enlightened seem filled with light and happiness, like children? Why do they sometimes even look and talk like children? Because they are. The wise are Children Who Know. Their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning, and filled with the wisdom of the Great Nothing, the Way of the Universe."

Now let’s look at where we are today. A good model for understanding our captivity as creative beings lies in something called the Panopticon. In the 18th century, a man named Jeremy Bentham designed a prison in the shape of a wheel. The cells in this prison surround a central guard station (at the hub), and the guard station remains in perpetual darkness while every cell is permanently and brightly lit.

Bentham called his design the Panopticon not because the guards conduct constant peripheral surveillance, but because the prisoners cannot tell when or whether they’re under surveillance and thus assume that surveillance is constant. The very nature of the environment projects power and control because it instills pressure and the fear of being watched. There is also nothing to shield prisoners from view; no matter how they try they cannot hide. The hub is, in effect, an all-seeing eye.

Derrick Jensen’s excellent book, "Welcome to the Machine," describes the effects of this design on a cultural scale, and mentions that Michel Foucault once wrote that the prisoners in the Panopticon are “caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.” In other words, left alone in such a culture, we act out our lives in an orderly, restricted, predictable, manipulated manner that suits those at the center.

Foucault also wrote, “It is an important mechanism, for it automizes and disindividualizes power. Consequently it does not matter who exercises power.”

And now…let’s turn our attention to the Pentagon as the central guard station.

Got the picture?

Without going into details of the obvious relationship between current Pentagon strategy and the objectives of the Panopticon, let’s just say the Pentagon is putting the finishing touches on its ability to control the world, or at least those inside think they are. In fact, in the darkest part of the Pentagon, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), they think knowledge is power.

From "Welcome to the Machine":

"In response to criticism, the United States government changed the name of Total Information Awareness — though not, of course, its function — to the less accurate Terrorism Information Awareness. Presumably it also began dossiers on everybody who complained about the program.

"The Information Awareness Office logo consists of the name of the organization surrounding a blue background against which we have the truncated pyramid and the by-now-familiar all-seeing eye. This eye, of providence, of God, of the police, of the military, of representatives of major corporations, emits a ray of golden light to illuminate and overlook the globe. In the upper right are the initials DARPA, and in the lower left is Scientia est Potentia, a Latin phrase they translate as Knowledge is Power."

The key to understanding geopolitical turmoil today lies in the model of the Panopticon. The key to visualizing life beyond this turmoil lies in the joyful nature that comes with being — if you take away the normality of our imprisoned state of mind.

Add to the cultural control factor the following: Money, fashion, corporate workplaces (bosses and slaves), hierarchy in gender, injustices ignored and thus tolerated by default, and…well, all the other pressures that have molded or scolded you into who or what you think you are today.

Jensen writes, “How much of our identity is lost or stolen (or maybe just slips away) when we do not resist those whose policies are destroying life on this planet, those who believe their providence — their God, their Science — is leading them toward some strange utopia of absolute knowledge, absolute surveillance, absolute control? How much of our identity do we lose when we fear we are being watched by those at the center of the Panopticon? How much of our identity is necessarily stolen by the Panopticon’s mere existence?”

Ready for the good news? I thought so.

We are born caretakers. We are born to organize. We are born creators and lovers and artists, not destroyers and haters and fools. Our wholesale transformation from killers to caretakers is at hand. Life beyond the Panopticon is easier than the trauma and wrongness of life inside this prison.

Why do I write this? Because I’ve lived beyond the Panopticon, in a community that worked, in a community that operated on principles of wisdom such as in "The Tao of Pooh." Some of you may have too. And I’d rather move beyond again — and help bring us all across to that joyful and alive and wonderful place — than remain complicit in this society’s large-scale legacy of destruction. This way of life wasn’t my creation, my fault, or my desire, but if I can choose (and we will have a choice), I will choose life, love, coexistence, and community for all.

The collision between illusion and reality, the inevitable change to come, is an opportunity and a gift. It is for life on Earth the next step forward, and it’s been so long since we moved in that direction. Each of us must rethink our thinking, or better yet simply shed the indoctrination, the propaganda, that comes from life inside the Panopticon.

Issues of race, gender, and perceived hierarchies…these are products of power using division as a tool, products of a misguided past. The truth is that our bodies are vessels for beautiful souls or “sparks of celestial fire,” as even George Washington was able to grasp. Our appearances are of no relevance except in the context of our divisive culture, wherein we are encouraged to be too proud of groups, thus separating us and limiting our advancement as beings.

Transformation provides a vehicle for unification. If you look at where the Pentagon is going and what other nations are doing in response, it’s clear that a collision is coming, and it doesn’t necessarily mean global annihilation. Rather than tremble with fear inside our cage, we can ponder life beyond the cage and prepare for a new world of true freedom.

With careful attention to the good of the whole and a conscience-based existence, out of the chaos we can create the environment to inspire and nurture each other, not in competition and slavery to a system, but in cooperation with life itself. Restoring our connection to nature and each other will signal the triumphant rediscovery of our sense of place among the stars.

Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
________________________________

With a lifelong focus on these issues, Brian Bogart is in his 50th year of life and his fourth year as the first graduate student in Peace Studies at the University of Oregon. His thesis novel spans 900 years and creates for readers a vision of a just and peaceful future while broadening awareness of the nature of power in our society.

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines Peace Studies as: Educational courses designed to explore the role of the military in society, international strategic relationships, and those conditions that most promote peace and human welfare.

Posted by: Brian at June 5, 2005 04:59 PM

Posted by: Mike at June 13, 2005 04:33 AM