Foucault's Panopticon

Panopticon, at its core, represents power through knowledge. Foucault's concept came about because of the change in punishment for prisoners and those in insane asylums in the mid-1800s. Reflecting Jeremy Bentham's design, panopticon allowed for a new mode of obtaining information that, unlike forms of torture, did not require a lot of of resources and yielded a lot more valuable results. The idea was that prison guards, and the like, sat in a center tower with the ability the view into each cell and observe the behavior of individual prisoners. What made this new system powerful was that the prisoners knew they were being watched, and as a result, they could altered their behavior. Some actually showed self-norming characteristics. This type of group monitoring was not only limited to prisons, but it could be applied to schools, hospitals, and the rest of society as a whole. Thus, surveillance at an institutional level was born. 

Bentham's representation of Panopticon. Credit:google images

Surveillance during Foucault's time and throughout the 20th century was a top-down, deductive method where the "surveiller," usually a government agent, would deem someone suspicious of a crime and would proceed to monitor their daily activities until their suspicions were confirmed or denied. This was was good old-fashioned spying, as seen in movies where one would stake-out in an all-black vehicle with tinted windows, monitoring a suspect's every move. Surveillance of this nature is known as retail compared to today's wholesale surveillance. In modern societies, technology has helped change the unilateral form of monitoring into a more complex medium of identity exchange. Marketers, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and many more can obtain various forms of identity, be it email or phone number, and sell to others for advertisement purposes. We are being surveilled in a multitude of ways by many, smaller panopticons.

The National Security Agency, NSA, is the ultimate panopticon of American society. In their wholesale method, the NSA collects tons of metadata many people daily, including non-Americans. Though content of data is not disclosed, metadata entails labels about communication. For example, a phone call made can reveal who you are contacting, your location, length of call, and much more, leading people to question whether that level of detailed information is necessary, and even constitutional. In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden brought the entire nation and the world to a halt when he leaked secret government surveillance files. His argument was and continues to be that government surveillance crosses certain privacy boundaries of its citizens and Americans need to be aware.

Edward Snowden. Credit: wired.com

An NPR article earlier this year presented a debate over whether Snowden was justified in breaking an oath under the constitution. I think Foucault would argue that, in a way, Snowden's actions were both justified and reputable. Foucault wanted society to be aware that they were constantly under surveillance, and by leaking the documents, Snowden did exactly that. However, he would disagree in the manner that Snowden raised awareness; a manner that instilled fear and distrust by some toward the government. One must understand that he/she is being monitored, but it is NOT at the expense of his or her own freedom and livelihood. 

New Meme Culture

In their take on meme culture, Michelle Knobel and Colin Lankshear propose that modern cultural memes rely on three essential principles for viability: Fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. Fidelity pertains to the quality of the meme, which allows it to be readily passed along. Fecundity is the rate that a meme is copied and spread. Longevity refers to the ability for a meme to stay current for a long time; some memes even cycle through periods of extreme popularity and periods of dormancy. Knobel and Lankshear assert that in the online world, fidelity and fecundity have been replaced by replicability and susceptibility, respectively.

In popular culture, memes are appropriations of the word itself to describe certain phenomena. In other words, people on the internet that create these patterns of cultural information are successful in doing so because of the audience's presumed knowledge, albeit shallow, of memes. The assumption that a person viewing a meme, to some extent, understands some of the theorized concepts of memetics may have held true a decade ago or even 5 years ago. However, this is not entirely the case today.

Memes today still possess the three principles and there are some people, in some online communities, that create memes which rely on a certain understanding and level of digital literacy that the lay audience may lack. So, while the criteria for meme production has not changed, it seems that the audience's perspectives have. Online memes today almost solely require an understanding of its cultural implications: Memes today are one big inside joke. Some are universal across the web, while others are specific to some communities. This is primarily the reason for the shift toward still photos of various popular characters with captions, as well as moving pictures.

The meme on the left is an image of Kobe Bryant, an accomplished NBA player and athlete. During the peak of his career on the Los Angeles Lakers, he gained a reputation for not exactly being the team player. Bryant was (and still is) compared to some of the great basketball players such as Michael Jordan, and he strived for glory on and off the court, often opting to go for ambitious shots rather than utilize his teammates. One notorious moment was during a finals game where Bryant worked through a very tight defense to make a jump shot instead of passing to his then teammate, Shaquille O'neal, who was free to make less risky shot. After Bryant made the shot, the camera zoomed in on a very frustrated O'neal who appeared to say "pass the ball Kobe." Hence, Bryant's reputation thereafter and the subject of this meme. This meme is specific to basketball communities, though some elements are universal with respect to professional athletes and their public persona.

The Michael Jackson meme is a image from his "Thriller" music video. This is an example of a meme that is specific to certain communities of the web and even certain sections of a website such as the comments section. Instead of actually writing a comment, people on the web use memes like this to express themselves.

 Sweet Brown explaining her unfortunate mishap, which was later remixed into an internet meme.

Unlike these memes, the IcanHazACheezburger meme that began the modern cultural phenomenon received hardly any positive feedback from my Intro to Digital Cultures class. The general consensus was that it was difficult to understand without the theories and the necessary literacy of this kind of culture. Though they brush upon the idea that the perception of memes are changing, the authors of the text don't elaborate well on this new meme culture that has significantly changed within the past few years.

From Many To Many: The Power of Participation

In pre-world war II American society, and even during the war era, content was created and transmitted by an elite few. The media platform for content transmission was radio, and the host responsible for giving information was typically an elite white male. He was not "average" by any standard- he had wealth and status that stemmed from generations of business owners and high-ranking military officials, which allowed him an education and opportunities that the masses weren't afforded. Conversely, however, the people receiving information represented all ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds in America: from the Jewish housewives in Brooklyn to the racially-segregated communities in the South. Even the birth of television, a couple of decades later, and then color television, did not significantly change the system of content creation by a few to the masses. This is what Howard Rheingold coins as the "the few to many" media platform.

The internet, and most importantly, participation by people on the web has hacked the few-to-many system. Many people can now create content for others to see. Information that we receive no longer has a certain criteria for style, mood, and timing. Using modern technology as tools, people make whatever they want, whenever they want. Interestingly, the audience has also expanded. A youtube video made by someone living in Seattle can be seen by those in Seoul, Addis Ababa, Manila, Rome, and pretty much every corner of the globe. Participation culture has allowed for a "many to many"system of media creation and transmission.

Celebration of President Obama's 2008 election win by many around the world.

Participation in modern technology and media is so important now that politicians rely heavily on content from the web to gain exposure, and even credibility. Because participation culture does not assume a passive audience, it has become a legitimate source for elections. According to Rheingold, people who participate have a necessary "crap-detection skill"so they are not just going to support any and everything that is on the web. They tweet, blog, and search information that is worth their time. From his announcement of running for presidency in 2007 and throughout his second general election campaign, President Obama has relied on and benefitted from participation culture. The grassroots were key to his overwhelming support by young people and others that are present on the web whom avidly use networking media.

President Obama thanks his campaign staff for mobilizing the grassroots.

President Obama's successful election campaigns are a testament to the effect participation culture can have in the mainstream media. Any president that hopes to be elected to Oval Office from now on is going to need participation by those on the web, and hopefully, the grassroots will create and share information are in his or her favor.

Multiplicity as Identity

In Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle introduces the idea of multiplicity as the human identity in the chapter on Identity Crisis. Multiplicity is the effect of our communities and other social constructs, real and virtual, on our persona. She states that traditional understanding and interpretations of the healthy human personality as rigid and immobile has been replaced by the notion of adaptability and fluidity, and as a result our identities are a conglomeration of many smaller personalities. Another part of her argument that is interwoven in multiplicity is the “saturated self” as the source of our constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identity. Turkle compares this idea to Hindu culture based on similarities in the belief that many things influence a person.

The depiction of multiple gods representing one entity. Credit: scribbleofayoungartist.

In modern Western societies today, the whole person strives to fulfill his or her various parts. In our fast-paced and ever-changing world, the ability to adapt to different situations proves to be favorable. The idea of a person engaging their whole self is even highly regarded in the media and has led to the popularization of activities, such as yoga, that only a few decades were practiced by a small section of the population. The belief that one needs to feed the mind, body and soul is rooted in multiplicity, and many people today are taking efforts to develop the whole self than in previous generations.

credit: lacunaloft.com/try-yoga

In its social context, multiplicity serves not only as an individual’s identity, but rather, it can be definitive of whole social groups and classes. In a special series a couple of years ago, Samuel Staley from NPR discussed the fluidity and mobility of the middle class. In the face of economic disparity, the middle class finds itself deconstructing and reconstructing, and essentially creating a new identity that meets social changes.

These examples of multiplicity in the media enhance Turkle's position on the importance of multiplicity as the human identity. As inhabitants of a world so multi-faceted, it only makes sense that the human identity reflects such complexity.