Surveillance In 1984 By George Orwell

How do you feel when you walk into a store or building and see a sign that says “This place is under 24/7 surveillance”.I always find myself wondering “How does a human being behave when they know they are being watched?” and I’m always amazed about how much it could change. Surveillance is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the duty or function of watching or guarding for the sake of proper direction or control. When you put someone or thing under surveillance, your goal is usually to learn something or to control it. With surveillance being so prevalent in our society under the pretext of safety, you can't help but to wonder what it's changed about how we operate through our society. In his book 1984 George Orwell writes “ You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

A panopticon is a building, usually a prison, where all the residents can be seen by a single observer but none of the residents can see the observer, or can tell when the observer is watching them. You can see how this type of prison could change the behavior of the prisoners drastically. To know that you could be being watched at any moment but not knowing when, would it not cause you to behave in whatever manner your observer wanted at all times? The panopticon uses the fear of authority and conquense to discipline prisoners without always having to take real action. French philosopher Michael Foucault takes this idea a step further with the idea he called Panopticonism. He says “In Panopticonism, the watcher ceases to be external to the watched…the gaze of the watcher is internalized to such an extent that each prisoner becomes his own guard” In the extreme situation of a prison built this way, the watched become their own warden and surveillance seems to become contradictory to