One aspect of contempory culture that, in my opinion is panoptic is the Census. The Census is an account that holds information about all the people and households in the country. This is collected for the government and local authorities. It is to be taken every ten years and invloves around twenty-five million households. In my eyes the Census is a form of Foucalt's theory of a 'disciplined society'.
Foucalt claimed 'this surveillance is based on a system of perminant registration'. Putting this into contempary context, we are being made to answer personal questions about ourselves and so giving the higherarchy more information to do with as they wish.
We fill out the Census without question even though we have never actually been told the 'punishment' for not doing so. We are self-regulating ourselves. 'power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection'.
The Census is panoptic because we are filling out personal details about ourselves and posting it to the government and not hearing any more from it. They have our details but we know hardly anything about them. Foucalt calls this 'a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad'.
By using the Census the higherarchy are keeping track and monerting the population in our country. there is constant surveillance which has been said to be 'the utopia of the perfectly governed city'.
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