Saturday’s Big Idea
Today's Big Idea: Panopticism
In the late 18th century prison reformers devised a new model, called the panopticon, that enabled guards to view prisoners without the prisoners knowing whether they were being watched or not. Prisoners therefore had to assume they were always being watched.
A similar form of mind control exists on the Internet. You have the possibility that the government will obtain your data on the one hand, and the much more pervasive threat that private companies are watching you as well. So how does the knowledge that someone coud be watching you affect your online behavior?
