Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State

Article has a small comment on the way society is moving from a Panopticon to a Panspectron.

028_Braman_Chapt9.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Reflections from an ordinary mind: Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability: An Initial Survey

Reflections from an ordinary mind: Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability: An Initial Survey

Demons that grounded Eagles | The Australian

With the backdrop of the untimely death of West Coast Eagles Club legend, Chris Mainwairing, this poignant article raises questions about how the club will respond in a meaningful way to the party culture that surrounds the franchise. There's probably more to this story than we will ever know, or want to know, but it does give plenty of weight to the idea of trading players that continually flout team rules - before it's too late.

Demons that grounded Eagles | The Australian

Eagles struggle to hold sponsors - realfooty.com.au

This link was sent to me by my good mate Jay Wood. It's what everyone has suspected would happen. Of course the ANZ would say that their withdrawal had nothing to do with drugs but if they were getting value for money from their sponsorship - read well disciplined players that reflected their corporate values - the money wouldn't be an object. Sponsorship arrangements are a package and the Eagles are dudding sponsors at the moment. Until they get their act together and send a message to the corporate community that they're serious about their problems, they'll continue to experience corporations questioning their investment in the club.

Eagles struggle to hold sponsors - realfooty.com.au

Eagles disown Mainwaring problems - AFL - Fox Sports

You've gotta love it. When things go pear-shaped why is it that so many leaders lay blame and justify when they could take responsibility for themselves and the problem and achieve something positive? And while the Eagles are ducking for cover, no-one's asking what roll Channel 7 has played in this terrible event? Many claim the Eagles have a drug culture problem, but what about the TV network? We'll probably never hear about that.

Eagles disown Mainwaring problems - AFL - Fox Sports

On Foucault - Discipline and Punsih

To most this post will male little or no sense. These are my notes on reading parts of Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison by Michael Foucault. Random House, Toronto 1977.

Torture

Punishment - public punishment that reflected the crime. Ritualised marks of vengeance applied to the body of the criminal. Reflected and reinforced the power of the monarch and was often above the laws which it proposed to uphold - torture. The punitive city.

The spectacle - Full of symbolism as a way of instructing the public and reinforcing the relationship between crime and punishment.


Prisons as a regimen to ensure compliant, obedient behaviour aimed at reforming a person through their giving themselves to the system. Coercion, training of the body as a way of changing the mind. Prisons represent the the institutionalisation of the will to punish p. 130

Discipline

Usually requires an enclosure, a heterogeneous space. Army barracks, workshops, factories, monasteries

Each person has a space and each space a person. Establishes presences and absences and sets up control.

Spaces are defined for things and processes. Each space a thing and each thing a space.

Timetables and the control of activity

Work takes on religious airs. Time-tables used to establish rhythm and control in schools, workplaces.

The body controls the gesture and the object of articulation and therefore must be disciplined to achieve the optimum outcome.

Discipline draws up tables, prescribes movement, imposes exercises, and arranges tactics p. 167

The exercise of discipline necessarily involves a mechanism of observation by a form of hierarchy that, in the process of observing gives power to the observer and the means of coercion makes the observed observable. Organisations are set up to maximise the surveillance by the hierarchy of the governed in a manner that is least intrusive but that maximises the surveillance. Embedding of surveillance. The whole apparatus is set up to maximise observation whilst giving the illusion of freedom. eg the creation of openings and spaces which permitted freedom and surveillance. p. 173. The pyramid organisation set up to maximise surveillance and minimise disruption to organisation.

A structure of normalisation creates a way to measure individual differences and allows for standardisation and the development of specialists through the achievement of this 'normal' behaviour p. 184

Where power is anonymous and functional, those on whom it is exercised become more individuated. Power is exercised through surveillance and observation rather than ritual and commemoration, by the measurement against a norm. Individuation arises from the degree that a person differs from the norm. p. 193

The Panopticon

"Visibility is a trap" p. 200

A way of inducing a permanent sensation of being watched that generates the power of the watcher. The feeling that surveillance is continuous even if it isn't. The power is therefore visible but unverifiable. The person need not know they are being watched, just believe that is the case. Therefore, the watching does not need to be continuous.

The panopticon is a machinery that ensures disequilibrium.

Because the prisoner believes they are being constantly watched they become their own prison guard and therefore the mechanism of power and control and prison administration can be smaller and lighter.

The panopticon becomes a place where society can keep itself continually surveilled - the Internet. Each person can keep the other under watch. It works best when surveillance is light and unseen.

Panopticon as a metaphor for self?

I'll let you go now

While I'm in the mood, what is it with people who "politely" end a conversation by saying "I'll let you go now"? How condescending is that? How is it that they see another person as a possession that can be let go? Why do they imagine that they had the person captured in the first place? And why do they believe that they are the person who gets to say when a person stays or leaves? I say to these "polite" people - say it as it is. If you're bored with a conversation end the conversation by all means, but don't pretend that it's for someone else's benefit. If you're really busy, say so - then go. Ending a conversation with "I'll let you go" is simply a weak mind's attempt to be socially acceptable. Find something original to say.

I'm leaving now.

West Coast - trade Cousins while you can

I'm tipping that Ben Cousins will be traded to the east by the end of trade week. He's too much of a risk for the West Coast to keep on the list. It seems that he's never too far away from trouble and you'd suspect that another slip from the star could see the club lose favour with a major sponsor. Rather than wait, the club would be better off getting a good trade deal for him and pick up a youngster an experienced small forward in his place. Cousins would provide the likes of the Tiges or the Saints with some mid-field power and the move could well be good for Cousins by getting him away from the circle of people in Perth that got him into trouble in the first place. It's a win all round.

Besides that, Worsfold must be fuming (not to mention sad) that one of his grand final brothers is no longer with us. By sending Cousins East, he sends a powerful message to other players that mis-behaviour will no longer be tolerated. One would wonder if the Cousins fiasco earlier this year was what tipped Judd to leave the club. It's no stretch of the imagination that it was, and the club is worse off for his departure.