"But the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is a diagram of the mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical six system: it is in fact a figure of political technology the may and must be detached from any specific use." ( p.99)
I wanted to use this quote from Foucault's chapter in the textbook because it got me thinking about some of the technology that is present in our everyday lives like our cell phones, our connection to the internet, and social media. In the past, we've always joked about the FBI, NSA, or some government entity spying on us through our phones or computer cameras. Sometimes we even receive an ad that might be a little too targeted, by this I mean, you were literally talking about a product the day before to your roommate, and now it's the next day, and an ad pop up for the same thing. As we've come to learn about targeted ads and how websites take our data and sell it to anyone interested, we start to think maybe our government is listening in on our devices. Also, why wouldn't our government want to have every single one of its citizen's mobile data? That is a gold mine for propaganda and manipulation, they literally have all of the information they need to manipulate every single citizen in their own unique way. The internet and cell phones are essentially just a digital Panopticon that our government has control over, whether we want to admit it or not. Unless you are some super techy coder, not many people are going to know that most of their personal information is available for the taking when they open up their internet browser. No matter what website you visit, your data is fair game as we learned with Facebook and Cambridge analytical. Additionally, I think the incognito mode in your internet browser is a complete joke, it doesn't prevent your information from being taken and sold by third-party companies. There is nothing incognito about it and I'm pretty sure you and your information are more vulnerable to being taken if you use an incognito/private browser, especially if you don't have a popup/ad blocker. Another thing about those jokes we still make about the NSA spying on us, they actually do spy on us. Maybe not us specifically, but they have the capability to do so, as we learned from Edward Snowden.
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