I attended a webcast, "Reconsidering Social Media," last week hosted by the O'Reilly media team and found myself pleasantly surprised at the philosophical turn of the conversation. I bet the Enlightenment philosophes turned over in their graves as we had a webcast "salon."How did I get from social media to the Age of Enlightment? Trust me, the parallel is there. For starters, Joshua-Michele Ross brought up how the Enlightenment movement advocated freedom, liberty and progress at the very same time as the birth of prisons and asylums. In other words, the Enlightenment championed progressive ideals while institutions began to lockdown individuals and develop ways to control and manipulate society.
The panopticon is a prison 'in the round,' where the guard tower is at the center of a circle of cells (see above image). The idea is that prisoners can't tell when they're being watched and will therefore self-regulate their behavior to avoid additional punishment.
