Panopticon, «transparent society» and new media

Abstract

The article presents the experience of interpreting the concept of J. Vattimo «Transparent Society» (La Società Trasparente) in the context of the search for the answer to the question: how is the optical metaphor of the «Panopticon», introduced by J. Bentham and disseminated thanks to the works of M. Foucault, the concept of «Transparent Society» and New Media. The key problem of the article is outlined by the question whether New Media Technologies are an instrument for building the «Transparent Society» or, conversely, they act as a brake in the self-deployment of this process. Among the analyzed phenomena are «Production of the Media Effect of Presence», technologies for creating Media Phantoms, Media Fakes and Media Manipulations, Multimedia and Hypertext as the two main discoveries of the Information Era, «Memex» as an artificial «Memory Machine», «Derealization of Reality», Digital Voyeurism, fact checking and verification procedures of Media Messages in the Post-Gutenberg Era. «Digital Panopticism» of the New Media Era is seen in parallax optics: both as a catalyst for the transition to the «Transparent Society» and, on the contrary, as an obstacle to this transition. The result of the study is the assertion that the universal «Panopticon» as an unattainable ideal of the «Transparent Society» is doomed to remain a utopia.