Asyouwish 4/19 Focault

During our class discussion on Focault, so many different examples from all sorts of places came to mind. The quote "Our society is one not of spectacle but of survalience" (101) was mostly responsible for the examples of this that came flooding into my head. Last weekend I watched a news program that had a feature story about a woman who watched her own house being robbed at work because she had hooked up monitors in her house that connected to the web so she could keep an eye on her house from anywhere that provided internet access. This woman was at work like any other day and randomly logged in to check on her house where she saw two men break into her house. She immediately called 911 and reported the break-in telling them she was watching it occur at the moment, what the criminals were taking, doing and tampering with. From her computer monitor the house owner watched the police arrive and assisted them in finding the robbers by watching their whereabouts. This story truly helped me identify with Focault's quotation because the news story was not dealing with the fact that someone's house was being robbed but instead concentrating on the fact that because the homeowner had survalience cameras around her house she was able to contact the police and report the wrong doings.

Another story which came to mind after hearing Focault's quotation about society being of survalience, was a case I learned about in Psychology. I do not remember the name of the case, but I will explain what it was. The case was based on a woman being attacked and shot multiple times in a public area, a place where people would see this taking place and one would think would call 911. However in this instance no onlooker called 911, when questioned as to why not each onlooker stated that they figured someone else had already reported the incident. The woman died and could have been saved if one person had called, but no one did. This relates to Focault because the society watched this occur and yet didn't report the crime thus this example causes me to be in agreement with Focault's theory.