Panspectron
From Capitalism and Schizophrenia
At the time of Deleuze writing his "Postscript on control societies", actual surveillance systems were being built by security services, designed to operate along the lines of the control societies diagram. Writing at the same time as Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda (1991) describes how such agencies (notably the National Security Agency) were increasingly putting together surveillance systems based on a diagram that he calls “the Panspectron”. In constrast to the Panopticon, the Panspectron monitors a wider segment of frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, the Panspectron not only registers the visible, but also radio, radar, microwaves and so on. There are other differences beteween the Panopticon and the Panspecton:
"Instead of positioning some human bodies around a central sensor, a multiplicity of sensors is deployed around all bodies: its antenna farms, spy satellites and cable-traffic intercepts feed into its computers all the information that can be gathered. This the processed through a series of “filters” or key-word watch-lists. The Panspectron does not merely select certain bodies and certain (visual) data about them. Rather, it compiles information about all at the same time, using computers to select the segments of data relevant to its surveillance tasks." (DeLanda, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 1991: 206)
So, in other words, DeLanda was also investigating the forming of a post-Panoptic diagram, very similar to the one that Deleuze sketched in his postscript. (The overlapping and decentralised networks of surveillance, the move from individuals to dividuals, the reliance on computers, and so on.) The crucial difference between the two is that DeLanda described the diagram of a concrete military assemblage, whereas Deleuze approached the diagram from his own (somewhat anecdotal) impressions of shifts occuring within “civil” institutions (notably the corporation). When juxtaposed, however, it seems as though the two philosophers were writing – independently? – about the same diagram, in the process of coming together.
See also panopticon.
