The twentieth century has seen a lot of politicking about what public space really is and how best it can be tamed for the common good of everyone. In consumer circles, it has been made a subject of discussion and interrogation, whether it is possible to make privacy more private or whether privacy is made more public each passing day. There have been a lot of social shifts, multiple closures as well as transfigurations that have ensured that the state and corporate and also private business get an easy access into people’s personal space without anyone thinking that this could be wrong. If it is acceptable, then it is right therefore not taking into consideration the fact that privacy is paramount in people’s lives. If it is acceptable, then why question the fact that there are times when the private information is given out and risking people’s privacy and protection from crime and crime related ventures (Elmer 2003).
An all seeing kind of surveillance on the customer makes the customer naturally want to tow the line and meet all the standards expected of them. Not only in the kind of behavior that they are expected to exhibit within any business premise but also on how and when to do everything as pertains to the transaction involved. It is true therefore that this is a system that is meant to imprison the consumers by just enticing them and keeping them enticed so that they go on with life as if nothing is wrong with what they are doing. When this is the case, panoptic surveillance lets the consumers give out information unknowingly when they are solicited to do so without them knowing that which is exactly going on (Elmer 2003). Their information is accumulated for the benefit of the wider web with the aid of technology. The consumers are just led and all they do is follow. It could have been different if they were to be involved in every step of the decision making when it comes to choosing the services and how they are supposed to be done because they are the major stakeholders.
There are several critics of the Foucault ideologies and they highlight the discriminatory nature of panoptic surveillance. They bring to light the notion of how consumers are pushed to make choices of relinquishing private information for the sake of receiving benefits. Some of the technological advancements have seen to it that private information is let out without much thought (Cady & McGregor 289). This therefore means that one is not guaranteed to their privacy because at some point, the information given out can be used against a person. Talk about online fraud and hacking. This is the point at which dataveillance is put at the mercies of the handlers of the systems that retain the information because a person can decode to easily access the information at their disposal and do unwarranted damage to the innocent consumers.
But even so, there are specific dynamics in panoptic surveillance help qualify and quantify the behaviors of consumers. Some consumers will therefore self discipline themselves because they know they are being watched and monitored. Everything they do is done discreetly knowing very well that all the personal information gathered can be all useful to other people elsewhere. This is very possible in order to monitor and even facilitate distribution of statements (Elmer 2003). Consumers will embrace discipline that and this just happens by design because they really have got to conform to the trends and the expectations of not only the market trends but also by societal standards. There may be no agents of authority to do drive them to do this but then, the panopticon surveillance uses a kind of architecture whereby persons are classified by the mere help of files.
Computerized technologies and network have made it possible for consumers to give away private information therefore subjecting themselves to close monitoring by not only the service providers but also the persons or institutions whose services or goods they require. This has made it possible for the panoptic mode of surveillance to gain root. Such information is used to profile consumers and therefore check their trends. There is great concern on whether consumer profiling is done right (Cady & McGregor 294). There is a great possibility that wrong profiling is bound to happen as ill fitting profiles can be produced which may fail to fit into what the actual consumers are, their likes and dislikes and even their behaviors. This then means that the predictive technologies will fail to get their information right. These decentralized databases may mislead the markets by giving out unreliable information which in the long run may lead to getting everything wrong and this could have a very negative effect on the consumer interactions.
Database security too is put on test. This is so because many databases converge to a central point. Before the information is even disseminated to the central place, it is solicited from the consumer. How secure s the information from the point where it is solicited to the database? That remains a question that no one will truthfully answer. There is the question whether the consumers ignore the dire consequences of being too trusting to such an extent that they give out their information not necessarily taking into consideration that one can use the information to completely finish them (Cady & McGregor 76). An example is when a person is carrying out a transaction with the aid of an ATM. How sure can one be that the information given before carrying out a transaction is secure and that no one else can use it to access their accounts knowing very well that the dataveillance in place can be faulty? This computer aided solicitation is good and functions to the convenience of the consumer but then, the risk involved is too enormous and it seems not to bother anyone.
Everything in the consumer world is becoming computerized and the consumers are left with no choice but keep up to speed with what is going on around them lest they are left behind. Even watching television now is a big deal because of television coding which helps satellite television providers keep track of their customer viewing patterns so as to know their preferences. This adds up to synoptic kind of consumer consumption. This kind of viewer profiling makes the service providers know the customer preferences and therefore use this information when developing and choosing programs that are to be aired because, they will know the kind of programs the viewers are interested in and therefore work hard in giving just what the consumer is able to use. In this case, panoptic surveillance is also in place. Consumers are monitored and treated like slaves here. They are continuously monitored with the sole aim of knowing who they are and therefore be kept glued to particular services and are given no other options other than those that are inclined to certain specifications. It is clear in this article that even the consumers seem to like what is happening and are playing along with the trends.
The shift from architectural and optical modes as perpetuated by Foucault is a subject of great debate. Deleuze seems to disagree with this notion because he thought that modulation is good enough for it shows the relationship that exists between power and technological networks. This offers to answer the question on the applicability of spaces of enclosure which were a concern of Foucault. There is a palpable tension between privacy and public space. How much is supposed to be in the public domain? The seemingly spacelessness of the internet has changed the way everything else is done in regard to what was traditionally considered as private and personal. In all these, the economy stands to benefit at the expense of personal space. The rules of access keeps changing every fortnight, this applies to the nature of control over every other thing that concerns the consumers. The services and goods providers have made life so easy and the consumers seem to take in everything without question and the rules of the game do concern them as long as all they want is at their disposal to serve their comfort. An all seeing surveillance just like everything else has its advantages and disadvantages and as long as everyone seems okay, it is all right.
Work Cited
Cady, Glee & McGregor, Pat. Protect Your Digital Privacy!: Survival Skills for the Information Age. Indianapolis: Que Publishing. 2002
Elmer, Greg. (2003). A Diagram of Panoptic Surveillance. PDF File
