banksy pokes at the invisible eye.

[-from the UK Daily Mail]
read the article here.

when we watch one another, do we insure safety or do we enforce conformity;
discipline or fear and suspicion.

this cctv-implanting in every nook and cranny and line, circumventing our entire public lives (and some private areas) reminds me of jeremy bentham's panopticon- his revolutionary idea of a prison where one sees all without being seen.

this created the first true invisible overlord. there is no blue sky above us now, but instead, implicated in our daily lives and then, implicit in our unconscious imaginings, a higher status wielding 'law', 'righteousness' and 'power'.

"... Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power... power should be visible and unverifiable."
- Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975.