HIGH-TECH SOCIETY

A recent New York Times “House and Home” article featured the story of a man who lives in a glass house. Every wall in his home is trans-parent; he has no walls to hide behind, not even in the bathroom. Of course, he lives in an isolated area, so he doesn’t exactly have neigh peering in and watching his every move. But he has chosen to live without any physical privacy in a home that allows every action to be seen. He has created his own panopticon of sorts, a place in which everything is in full view of others.

The term panopticon was coined by Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century when he was describing an idea for how prisons should be designed. The prisoner’s cells would be placed in a circle with a guard tower in the middle. All walls facing the center of the circle would be glass. In that way, every prisoner’s cell would be in full view of the guards. The prisoners could do nothing unobserved, but the prisoners would not be able to see the guard tower. They would know they were being watched—or rather, they would know that they could be being watched—but because they could not see the observer, they would never know when the guard was actually monitoring their actions. It is common knowledge that people behave differently when they know they are being watched. We act differently when we know someone is looking; we act differently when we think someone else might be looking. In these situations, we are less likely to be ourselves; instead, we will act the way we think we should act when we are being observed by others.

In our wired society, many talk of the panopticon as a metaphor for the future. But in many ways, the panopticon is already here. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, and we often don’t even know our actions are being recorded. In fact, the surveillance camera industry is enormous, and these cameras keep getting smaller and smaller to make surveillance easier and more ubiquitous. In addition, we leave a record of everything we do online; our cyber-whereabouts can be tracked and that information used for various purposes. Every time we use a credit card, make a major purchase, answer a survey, apply for a loan, or join a mailing list, our actions are observed and recorded. And most of us have no idea just how much information about us has been recorded and how much data is available to various sources. The scale of information gathering and the scale of exchange have both expanded so rapidly in the last decade that there are now millions of electronic profiles of individuals existing in cyberspace, profiles that are bought and sold, traded, and often used for important decisions, such as whether or not to grant someone a loan. However, that information is essentially beyond our control. We can do little to stop the information gathering and exchange and can only hope to be able to control the damage if something goes wrong.

Something went wrong recently for me. Someone obtained my Social Security number, address, work number and address, and a few other vital pieces of data. That person then applied for a credit account in my name. The application was approved, and I soon received a bill for nearly $5,000 worth of computer-related purchases.

Fraud, of course, is a different issue, but this kind of fraud couldn’t happen—or at least, couldn’t happen with such ease and frequency— in a world of paper-based records. With so much information floating about in cyberspace and so much technology that can record and observe, our privacy has been deeply compromised.


I find it truly amazing that someone would want to live in a transparent house at any time, but especially in an age when individual privacy is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and defend (against those who argue that information must be gathered for the social good). Or perhaps this man’s house is an attempt to call our attention to the fact that the panopticon is already here, and that we are all just as exposed as he is.