yellowdaisy4, 4/19/09

I found our Foucault discussion we had in class to be interesting because I didn’t realize how much what he was talking about actually applies to our lives. When we went around the room and everybody said how many times his quote “inspection functions ceaselessly” applied to their week, I was surprised how many times we are watching someone or being watched or monitored. When I initially did the reading I had a hard time understanding what a panopticon was but now knowing it’s a jail where you are always being watched, I think it is a really good metaphor for our society. Like the prisoners, we as a society are somehow either being watched or know it is possible that somehow someone is watching us. This is so prevalent today because now we have web cams in every room, security cameras at every store, nanny cams, video cameras on your phone and even spy cameras in things like pens. We are constantly being captured on tape so many times a day that if we realized it, we would all probably be more paranoid. I think an interesting topic was brought up about whether the school should have security cameras or not. That really is a tough decision because although they can help with safety and getting people out of trouble, they can also be an invasion of privacy and get people into more trouble. I find it interesting how more of the students seem to want the cameras more than the faculty because our generation seems to just be more used to it. I also think Foucault brought up a really good point about how “we are neither in the amphitheater, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power which bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism”. I feel like this quote explains how we blame it on something like “the man” always watching us but we don’t realize that we are part of this whole thing. As a society we are doing this to ourselves and are in charge of it all yet we are victims to it to. However, it’s easier to say we are in charge of the surveillance and capable of changing it then it actually is.