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panopticon

[ pan-op-ti-kon ]

noun

  1. a building, as a prison, hospital, library, or the like, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.


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Word History and Origins

Origin of panopticon1

1760–70; pan- + Greek optikón sight, seeing (neuter of optikós; optic )

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Example Sentences

If the alien is, in fact, always watching them from inside that cloud, then the Haywoods’ ranch starts to feel a bit like a panopticon—a central observation tower within a ring of prison cells.

From Time

In these systems, facial recognition becomes just one part of an apparatus that can identify people by a range of techniques, fusing personal information across connected databases into a sort of data panopticon.

Privacy advocates had justified concerns about the Google-adjacent company’s ability to capture a near-total amount of data from the residents of the development or any city-dweller that wandered into its high-tech panopticon.

The Panopticon is usually considered an abstract idea, but in fact I lived in one.

He spent 16 years of his mostly 18th century life designing the Panopticon, which was to be the ideal disciplinary institution.

The Panopticon By Jenni Fagan A teenage heroine is sent to a reformatory in this dystopian novel.

How have we gotten so comfortable with the panopticon state in little more than a decade?

In his dissent, Scalia warns of such a “genetic panopticon.”

It had struck him that an application of his Panopticon would give the required panacea.

Had any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both 'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at work.

The Panopticon, as defined by its inventor to Brissot, was a 'mill for grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'

Meanwhile Bentham, meditating profoundly upon the Panopticon, had at last found out that he had begun at the wrong end.

During this period Bentham was also occupied with the Panopticon, and some writings refer to it.

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