It was his brother’s,” says Philip Schofield, professor of the History of Legal and Political Thought and Director of the Bentham Project at UCL. “The panopticon wasn’t originally Bentham’s idea. The people in the cells, however, aren’t able to see the watchman, and therefore have to assume that they are always under observation. The tower shines bright light so that the watchman is able to see everyone in the cells. In the cells are prisoners – or workers, or children, depending on the use of the building. The basic setup of Bentham’s panopticon is this: there is a central tower surrounded by cells.
Is it still a useful way to think about surveillance in an age of NSA and GCHQ? As a metaphor, the panopticon was commandeered in the latter half of the 20th century as a way to trace the surveillance tendencies of disciplinarian societies. The Panopticon legacyĪs a work of architecture, the panopticon allows a watchman to observe occupants without the occupants knowing whether or not they are being watched. The PanoptiCam project is a pun on the “panopticon”, a type of institutional building that has long dominated Bentham’s legacy. Prof Melissa Terras, director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, tells me that the camera is used to learn the best way “to identify and count different people in still images, accurately.” UCL are hoping that it will spark discussion around contemporary surveillance, but it isn’t a coincidence that this webcam is attached to Bentham’s box.
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