The Old Panopticon

For those of you who might be wondering ... The Panopticon is a real thing. At the very least it's a real idea.

I did not invent the word. Jeremy Bentham did way back in the early nineteenth century He was in his day a "philosophical radical" who sought in his mostly unfinished works on legal philosophy to remove the moral and legal chaos of English law (which Bentham thought relied far too heavily on "intuitionism", a belief that the law should rest on common sense principles of morality and ethics - you could say that Bentham was one of the first to believe that " 'common sense ' " is neither.) Bentham is known as an early and major proponent of utilitarian philosophy, even inventing a "hedonic calculus" for determining the justness of one course of action or decision versus another, based on maximizing the pleasure and happiness within a whole community.

Although he achieved far greater fame and a more prominent place in the history of philosophy (not to mention a line in Monty Python's famous "Bruces' Philosophers Beer Drinking Song), John Stuart Mill owed a large intellectual debt to Bentham. To a great extent, the western world is still very much the world of Bentham and Mill. That's not to say it's the "right" or most "just" way to live, but it's the one the english speaking world still functions in to a very great extent.

So ... my invention is to call the modern communication networks, particularly the Internet (plus a few cameras and other pieces of hardware and software here and there), The New Panopticon , and Our New Panopticon. But I think it's a pretty good invention, and I'm going to keep using it. If you want to, go read Bentham and then J.S. Mill in the original (like I had to) and don't forget who sent you there ... have fun, and if you use the metaphor, don't forget to footnote me (or link to my blog) ... and also don't forget ... it's a panopticon ... so I'll be watching!

J.A.I.