E.M after class posting from 10-24 class.

Foucault’s “You are being watched” I term it the post 9/11 Panopticon.

Driving home from school immediately after learning of the towers and the Pentagon’s 9/11 attack. My first thought was – crap – now we are going see the Orwellian concept of Big Brother in action. Damn - I hate when I’m right. Privacy is a fallacy

I found this rather thought provoking article by Mark Monmonier – entitled Eleven Ways you are being Watched – he is the author of Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/534278.html

From our credit card purchases – to satellite surveillance which allows our government to peek into the American Pie back yard --- who has been nude sun-bathing? This would be an interesting subject to study -- how our society has changed or adapted pre and post 9/11..

I love this quote –
“I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area… I would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.”
—Michel Foucault (1974), 'Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir' in Dits et Ecrits, t. II. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, pp. 523-4).
I love this concept – this would fit right into Barthes “minding the gap” you become the active participant to the writer’s text. In Foucault’s text I become the active reader a full contact participant.

In essence Foucault concept that he called “power-knowledge” i.e. the rise of visible power. Example: the terror threat level – who decides to change the color? “They” never specifically say why the level changes. You never know when “they” are going to lower the threat. We are willing participants to this system. Today children--- we have a threat level orange – We ask why? Then our media asks why? – No answer-- which leads to media speculation. Well it could be that some where someplace someone – felt threatened. I saw our threat level rise and fall with the polling returns during our last election. “Wag the dog” thinking. If indeed we are the dog and our tail is being wagged for us – don’t you believe we will become more immune to perceived threats rather than afraid. Then again just when we thought-- all was safe – something happens. This something keeps us exquisitely alert.

I have a friend who lives in D.C. I can’t tell you what she does – or I’d have to kill you. In fact I don’t know what she does—who knows who could be reading this blog? I asked her how she feels living in a place that is in effect-- ground-zero for any sort of terrorist shenanigans. She was very blasé – “you deal” she said.