Panopticism creates a feeling of constant visibility from "summary" of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen. It is an ingenious mechanism for creating a consciousness of permanent visibility. The Panopticon is a type of location, a place of total visibility, a site where the exer-cise of power may be perpetually and completely assured. The Panopticon is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. The Panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them. The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men. It is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use. The Panopticon is a mechanism that reduces the danger of uprising and the spread of disorders. The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power. The Panopticon is a form of penality that has a number of different uses, and in addition, the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. This invisibility is a guarantee of order. The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
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