Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"I was involved in a cloning project. .. to send me into outer space along with a lot of other people. Not the whole me - just a hair from my head, while I still had some. I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the distant future."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Virtual Panopticon | ||
| A method that gathers information from many sources to effectively surveil any citizen as effectively as if he was in a glass cell. |
The term "panopticon" was coined by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The basic concept was that a watching guard could see easily into every corner of every cell in a specially designed circular prison.
Twelve Hawks expands on this idea, and creates the idea of a Virtual Panopticon that puts together all of the information available on a person, including real-time data on their location and activities. A prison without bars.
| "...These days people are frightened of the world around them, and that fear is easily encouraged and maintained. People want to be in our Virtual Panopticon. We'll watch over them like good shepherds. They'll be monitored, controlled, protected from the unknown."
"Besides, they rarely recognize the prison. There's always some distraction. A war in the Middle East. A scandal involving celebrities. The World Cup or the Super Bowl... Fear may induce people to enter our Panopticon, but we keep them amused while they're inside." |
| From The Traveler,
by John Twelve Hawks. Published by Doubleday in 2005 Additional resources -
|
The phrase "virtual panopticon" is not original to Twelve Hawks. Take a look at this article to see the phrase used in a different way - The Virtual Panopticon (by David Endberg), which I think dates from 1996.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 2 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Traveler
More Ideas
and Technology by John Twelve Hawks
Tech news articles related to The Traveler
Tech news articles related to works by John Twelve Hawks
| Zephyr Solar-Electric Stratospheric Drone |
| Robot Hummingbird Hovers Biomimetically |
| Capitalist Big Brother Co-Opts Regular Big Brother |
| Juggalo Face Paint Disrupts Facial Recognition |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'CIC uses [it] to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns...'
'With one fluid motion, it surged forward, plunged, and was gone.'
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed. For an interval, the device struggled with itself...'
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.'
'The death penalty was his immortality, and he would vote the death penalty for any crime at all.'
I can't resist science-fictional elements. Especially when they're real.
'The heart of it was a vast hexagonal structure of welded metal, ten miles across...'
