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Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

The panopticon was never built in the UK, but a number were built throughout the world in more modern times, the most starkly interesting to see is the Presidio Modelo in Cuba...


via wikipedia.com
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So this is the guy that John Locke got his alias from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke_(Lost)

— Aviraj Saluja
We always forget, however, that the panopticon has another layer of watchers. As originally designed, the panopticon was supposed to allow society as a whole to watch everybody inside, thus serving as a check on the guards within from exceeding their powers.
— Vincent Chu
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