How does the Panopticon play out in our contemporary lives?
The Panopticon plays out in our lives in several different ways, as is discussed in the podcast, though to me one of the most prominent is through the media we consume. We see standards of beauty, behavior, and what it is to be a "normal" person through both fictional and nonfictional media which embodies said norms; i.e. a magazine photo or a protagonist in a film. In the modern age, this is even true not just of celebrities and more "distant" figures, but even as we scroll through social media such as Instagram and see what our peers choose to showcase online, we find ourselves subjected to feelings like FOMO and feel inferior. In this sense, the point about the individual being both the "prisoner" and the "watchman" is true in a very tangible sense.