Boston, Bombs, Bentham
(Wednesday) - There are many unanswered questions in the Boston Marathon bombings. To the list of the obvious ones, including, who did this? why? foreign or domestic terrorism? what does it mean that no one has taken credit for this? anarchists? was this a failure of U.S. intelligence? we can add this: will the panopticon work for good? I don't pretend to understand the panopticon, the theoretical work of 18th and 19th century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham popularized by Foucault. But it is deeply intriguing and unavoidably metaphorical. Its design stems from the idea that a guard is able to observe all celled inmates in a jail without their being able to determine if they are or are not actually being watched. It is social control by architecture. It is said that Bentham described this prison as a mill for grinding rogues honest. A car driver who hits the brakes instead of running a red light, remembering a news story touting new red-light cameras, has...