The panopticon automatically collects information about subjects. It is its reason for existence; to observe and collect information. Light, gaze, collection of individualising and normalising information.

The surveillance of a specific blog is not automatic. An institution must make some form of assumption about sovereignty over that which is potentially contained within any and all blogs. This assumption leads to a surveillance of everything on the Internet in the hope of detecting the presence of words that match keywords or watchwords, for example the names of their products or that of their key executives. Delanda calls this observation of all the Panspectron. On the appearance of a keyword or watchword match, then, and only then, is the subject of specific surveillance formed. Until such time as a subject is formed panoptic surveillance does not exist but rather it exists in potentia.

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