Internet Services Tee

Internet Services tee took inspiration from the Panopticon, reflecting on the surveillant and the surveilled today. 

The Panopticon

The original concept is the brainchild of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and an architectural design of institutional buildings such as prisons. In Bentham’s proposal based on the notion of centralised surveillance, rows of exposed cells would be stacked around and observed by a watchtower in the middle.

Surveillance in the building is designed to be uniquely one-way: inspectors in the tower would have a clear view of the prisoners in their cells and even be able to communicate with the inmates via “an elaborate network of 'conversation tubes'” (UCL, n.d.). However, inmates could only hear the reverberations bouncing off the concave walls (Panda, 2021); the presence of inspectors would also be unbeknownst to them. The prisoners would have to assume that authority was omnipresent, and that is, they were constantly watched and listened to. 

“He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication” – Foucault, 1995

French philosopher Michael Foucault would later interpret Bentham’s design as a form of “disciplinary power” (Gregoire and Nedim, 2017), arguing that the panoptic view exerts asymmetrical power on the observed even in the absence of authority. By internalising the idea of permanent visibility, those observed through the panoptic lens would facilitate good moral conduct of their own accord, policing themselves out of fear of punishment (Guardian, 2015). 

The Digital Panopticon

In today’s context, Bentham’s Panopticon exists in a different form and is not limited to inmates. Beyond overt surveillance captured through CCTVs, the modern man experiences the panoptic lens virtually. Internet users are always watched like prisoners in the Panopticon, their behaviour observed by modern-day inspectors – companies and advertisers – on the web. Instead of fear of punishment, they would experience paranoia, fearing how they would be stalked online. 

Cybercitizens are constantly watched through the data traces they leave behind with each digital action they take. They “smudge [web cookies] across the cyber spheres'' (Russett, 2011:42 cited Mukane, 2016), contributing to a bottomless pit of big data that corporations can exploit for lucrative means. Take Spotify for example. The music-streaming company captures beyond what was given when an account is created. They would log “every tap, song start, playlist listen, search, shuffle, and pause” (Burgess, 2021), and even voice commands if used (Burgess, 2021) to extract behavioural insights useful for tailoring ads: “Dear person in the Theater District who listened to the Hamilton Soundtrack 5,376 times this year, can you get us tickets?” (Burgess, 2021). How creepy is that?

Companies and advertisers do not necessarily have to rely on direct data collection to spy on netizens. Ambient data is consistently fed into smartphones and other personal devices, and processed for wake words like “Hey, Siri,” “OK, Google,” or “Alexa”. While conversations aren’t actively listened to, third-party applications like Facebook can and have accessed these local data to identify their own set of trigger words and phrases for their own ads, evidenced by VICE’s experiment (Nichols, 2018). 

Birth of the Digital Panopticon

How did the digital Panopticon come about though? It was created and enabled by the development and reliance on the internet (Mukane, 2016). The advancement of technology such as audio and speech recognition gave birth to voice-activated devices and softwares that empowered people. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa democratised personal assistance, and Soundhound made discovering songs through natural language (simply singing or humming) easier than before. It is no wonder that while many are aware of such surveillance, they would continue to feed companies with more personal data for convenience and entertainment. 

Ironically, we may have brought the panoptic view upon ourselves. Although Spotify’s frequent campaigns such as its annual Year-in-Review is all fun and games, let’s not forget how it was created.