http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/stefanone.html
The panspectron: Panopticon improved?
Tactical memory: The politics of openness in the construction of memory by Sandra Braman
In this at times meandering article from First Monday, it is proposed that, whilst the Panopticon was, and still is, a powerful way to imagine spaces of discipline, it is the Panspectron that turns today’s environment of open information into an always-on surveillance machine. The article suggests that openness of information leads to all of the world’s information being gathered and analysed all of the time; and it is not until a query is made that a subject is brought into being.
This concept gives us pause for reflection in that whilst intuitively, open information appears to be a noble end in and of itself, as we consider the ways this information can be used as a tool of mass surveillance, participation in this information love-in appears much less appealing. This is particularly the case when we consider that the gathering and analysing of information is being conducted by both government and big business, neither of whom have a great track record in the protection of libertarian values.
Best I being careful what I write.
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Personal Publication and Public Attention
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Personal Publication and Public Attention: “In the educational system, the system legitimizes itself through creating tools for self-criticism. In this manner, criticism, rather than destabilising the hegemony disseminated through the educational system, reinforces it (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990b, p. 61). This study of reproduction appears to trap a scholar in an unbreakable trap, where the authority the scholar wields in her own study of the meaning of society is supplied through the doxa of the society within which study ensues. The fact that this structure permits criticism legitimates it, the same way as the criticism of the democratic government in the political sphere of Habermas legitimates the government it criticises.”