panopticism

"our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange; there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. we are much less greeks than we believe. we are neither in the amphitheatre, nor     on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism."  discipline & punish, the birth of the prison, michel foucault