A Scanner Darkly

According to “A Surveillance Society” By William E. Thompson there are camera everywhere, watching everything you do at all times. Cameras are found everywhere and are used by everyone, including the governments of the world who use it the most to track its citizens and potential threats to the safety of their nation. People are more willing to be watched in order to feel safer everywhere they go such as the supermarket to your own workplace. Governments can now look into your email, travel records, credit history and your personal life without your knowledge of them ever doing so, even your neighbors can now easily buy tools to spy on others or to protect themselves from danger; Things such as security cameras

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in

Foucault introduces the modern police force as an example of Panopticism. He explains that the development of a more centralized police force in the late eighteenth century stemmed from the need of sovereigns to maintain a sort of surveillance over all miniature details. With a mobilized, invisible force stretched from even the most “extreme limits”, it becomes possible to extend constant supervision “to reach the most elementary particle” (Foucault 386). The organization of the police became the vehicle in which political power could keep a “permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent” gaze on the entire population; a regular Panopticon for the city. Beyond duties of surveillance, the police would also pursue and punish criminals, plotters, and opposition movements as a way to demonstrate the consequences of bad conduct; fear would then keep the population as pure as possible and “accustomed … to order and obedience” (Foucault 387).

The main version of this surveillance is through the telescreen that is stationed in every room constantly watching the people. There is always propaganda across the screen supporting Big Brother and the endeavors of Ingsoc. The telescreen combined with the thought police is the ultimate tool for destroying individual thought, "The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide" (Orwell). This non-stop flow of information stimulates everyone to join in with the demands of Big Brother even when they do not want to. Even the telescreens and Thought Police are not enough because the people are faced with the omnipresent signs reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," that are constantly scrutinizing them.

“Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. We have taken the necessary security precautions and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.” President George W. Bush

The novella, The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross and the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow both present the readers with the issues and impact of surveillance upon the main characters. The surveillance exists in each separate work of fiction for different reasons, but reasons which are actually identical at their core. In The Concrete Jungle, the surveillance cameras originated out of a need for security, and related to that, feelings of fear and desire for protection. Thus, one could argue, in this novella, the need for surveillance arose out of something very organic and common, something which unites all humans: a desire for security. In society today, places of extreme importance, such as banks, government buildings, museums, office buildings and expensive homes these places all have surveillance cameras stemming from a healthy need to keep these structures safe. The Concrete Jungle represents a warping of this desire as the UK is blanketed in surveillance cameras and demonstrates a healthy need gone twisted. The Concrete Jungle and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, while distinct in style and content, both portray the struggle of the individual in maintaining identity against extremely evolved forms of surveillance.

As Richard Henry Lee once stated in a letter written to Arthur Lee, “North America is now most dimly united and as firmly resolved to defend their liberties ad infinitum against every power on Earth that may attempt to take it away.”

Orwell's eerie foresight only continues when Winston notices a Police Patrol helicopter darting from window to window, looking into people's windows. This type of surveillance in clearly illegal today, and would be noticed immediately, but in the last 50 years, satellites and unmanned drone aircraft have taken over the fictional role of the Police Patrols. Public satellites that are 10 to 15 years old currently can produce digital images with 1-meter resolution. Military satellites can supposedly produce images with 10-centimeter resolution, meaning that `Big Brother' could theoretically follow you from your house to your work to a restaurant and home again without you even knowing you were being watched. This type of surveillance is most likely being used mostly overseas, and not on Americans, but its mere existence should be a clear signal to us that our age has not avoided the surveillance pitfalls of 1984.

Foucault's "Panopticism" (1979) is a careful piece that talks about how a panoptic framework would impact culture, society, the political, and individuals. Foucault describes panopticon is to “induce the inmate a state of conscious and visibility that assures the automatic function of power.” Foucault mentions, surveillance has a lasting effects, regardless of the fact that it is discontinuous in its activity; that the perfection of power ought to render its real unneeded practice. The Inmates are in a dominating circumstance that they are them-selves the bearers. Foucault (201, 202–3) also mentions that "He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and knows it, expect responsibility regardless of the constrains of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon

     The Panopticon, a prison described by Foucault, “is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing” (321, Foucault). This literally means that in the formation of the panopticon those who are being seen can not see one another and the one who sees everything can never be seen. That is the most important tool of the panopticon. Foucault makes this assumption about today’s society by saying that we are always being watched whether we know it or not. One always keeps an eye over their shoulder as a

A Panopticon is a cylindrical prison where all prisoners’ cells face a central watchtower with the intention of instilling the idea of constant surveillance in prisoners. Panopticism stems from the same model which refers to the idea of constant surveillance in any setting especially in today’s world of technological pervasiveness. The panopticon represents the double edged sword that is present to society as authorities want to exert more control on the individuals. Between giving up privacy for safety and private lives that endanger all, the need for regulation of behavior gets stuck in the middle of it all. The movie Citizen Four (Poitras, 2014) highlights that any shred of privacy that we thought we had has been lost in the “shadowy labyrinths

In “Panopticism”, Foucalt describes the architecture of a Panopticon, and how it makes it so unique and efficient. A person in the middle is watching at all times, yet the people can never know if they are being watched or not. Also, the prisoners cannot communicate with one another, which prevents the threat

The Panopticon is a building which has an annual part in the periphery and a tower in the centre. Next to omitting little details its most important feature is the ability to see into every cells without being visible. “The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately.” (Calhoun et al., 2007: 209) The consciousness of being watched make people put on their best behaviour, their best way of acting thus the inmates do not commit any further crimes as it usually occurs that could happen without being watched.

The love story between two different teenagers that come from completely different worlds is the most remarkable. The Notebook is about two young teenagers who fell head over heels with each other. They got separated by Allie’s upper-class parents who insist that Noah isn’t right for her. But that obstacle didn’t stop these two young lovers from being together even if it took years. This beautiful tale has a special meaning to an older gentleman who regularly reads the timeless love story to his aging wife to help her remember what they went through and that the story that he’s reading to her was their love story. The story he reads follows two young