In chapter 8 of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Rheingold discusses Foucault's concept of social control and the way that knowledge and power are reinforced through surveillance (189). Does our always on, always connected digital culture give more power to those in control, placing us in a Panoptic structure where we have "voluntarily traded privacy for convenience" (186)? Or could connected groups of users "use what we now know about cooperation to drive power/ knowledge to a higher level of democracy (190)"?
If the Internet is changing the knowledge/power dynamic (for better or worse), does that change the way you think about the digital divide - where some groups of people are said to have been left behind by technology? What does all of this say about people who voluntarily "opt out" of a digitally connected life?
Elevation, section and plan of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, drawn by Willey Reveley, 1791 From Wikipedia
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