Notes: Improving Reality – Sept 4th Brighton Dome
Foucault Panopticon chapter from book ‘Discipline and Punish‘
Visibility is a trap
Prison not dungeon
No hiding or invisibility in dark squalor
Panopticon prisoners fully visible to guards
The form of social control of visibility
Architecture of power
The gaze of the authority from the few to the many leads to self policing
People with social vulnerability might modify their behaviour whereas others won’t if they are in a privileged position. Baudrillard describes us as celephane wrapped meat in the grocery store.
We are not really experiencing life in the moment but all of life as a museum.
Reality and the moment is always a future past rather than just being in the present moment. Social media is making us fixate so much in ourselves that we are not able to do anything else.
We are concerned constantly with who we are NOT!
Proving Foucault point. Social Media metrics controls us. They tell us what to not be like, to be normalised.
Social media can be ephemeral as a way of improving it. Respecting the here and now and not a permanent record for all of history. Ephemeral by default and permanent as an option only.
A little bit less self. It’s hard to live up to the frozen self that you have already put up on Facebook. Something more fluid is needed. Embrace identity change.
photo credit – top of page: Maf’j Alvarez
Featured image on homepage: Richard Smith smirby’s posterous under creative commons licence