critical essay written by nublaccsoul x new-black-soul (2021)
There is more than what meets the eye in our contemporary world of permanent visibility, wherein citizens are constantly under the light of continuous surveillance, a never-ending process of monitoring every move for the data to be used later. Although this is not a novel phenomenon in any regard since the evolution of disciplinary societies to the current control, but its invasiveness from the public arena of CCTV in parks, hospitals and schools has penetrated into the workplace and into the private home space of employees after work as a result of pervasive digital tools. In the interest of looking at this evolution of surveillance, this essay will first explore two articles: Matthew Finnegan’s “The New Normal: When work-from-home means the boss is watching” (2020) and Emine Saner’s “Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks — even emotions. Is your boss watching you?” (2018) outlining their central arguments and areas of concerns. Secondly, the writings of Michel Foucault on “The means of correct training” and “Panopticism” in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison will be explored as far as they provide a theoretical backdrop and historical context to the surveillance and control society we are experiencing in the contemporality. In this regard, a radical shift from everything that came before it introduces disciplinary power as omnipresent in the decipherment of the subject through various state institutions.
Matthew Finnegan reports discursively on the potential dangers of the increasing trend of employee monitoring within the context of the ‘new normal’ of the coronavirus that has called for working at home as a reality for many ‘white collar’ workers. The Computerworld journalists notes with concern the unethical nature of surveillance without the consent of workers whose apparent productivity and levels of efficiency are being tracked without their consent as “the tracking tools can be installed without the knowledge of employees” (Finnegan 2020) in a number of instances. The changes that have come with the development from the first industrial revolution to the current New Media age has resulted in corporations seeing a greater need to measure output, especially now when workers are not in the office to be (micro)managed (Finnegan 2020) and maximum labour to be extracted from them. The technological tools employed for this intrusive behaviour that has been on-going for a number of years span from tracking electronic mails, recording browser history, having restrictions on websites that can be visited such as YouTube and social media platforms in more conservative examples for office workers (Finnegan 2020) while for physical labourers based in factories and production plants such as Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, every move is tracked for so-called ‘productivity’ (Lecher 2019) and the employee is dismissed if the unrealistic metric is not met.
In a time of a global pandemic, with workers inundated with more work whilst being tasked with domestic duties by virtue of being home and other familial responsibilities, the expectation to not only meet key performance indicators is not empathic, but on the contrary, is data collection without context (Finnegan 2020). The lack of employee buy-in and lack of employee knowledge is indicative that these monitoring tools are not as benevolent as their developers would have people think but seems more of a case of secretly ‘catching’ employees out. Measurement of productivity can happen without live video recording or snapshots of the screen every pre-set interval and definitely without keystroke logging as if any of these are conclusive metrics to determine worker contribution (Finnegan 2020). However, on the contrary, data can be both beneficial to employees and employers if guided by transparent policies that are co-created by both sets of stakeholders to find ways to modify the efficacy of processes and ways to do more with less effort and the like (Finnegan 2020). While it is not clear if employees’ “consent” to data being collected on their ways of working (Finnegan 2020) would be truly meaningful and not coerced by the pressure of possible job loss should they protest these surveillance system, which is a major area of anxiety during this crisis as retrenchments are too rife for anyone to protest these Orwellian, dystopic features as the economic reality of being jobless is worse (Finnegan 2020).
Emine Saner (2018) furthers this discourse in investigating how much control do humans, employees in particular, have when we interact with information and communication technologies, questioning the central anxiety around how much agency and autonomy is retained in our exchange with the various interfaces, software and hardware. Todd Westby’s team might have been only happy to have microchips installed in their hands as a form of convenient biometric mechanism, but this is the exception and not the norm, as the possible misuses are many, all very unnerving (Saner 2018). The use of the same technology by the industrial prison complex in conjunction with GPS technology to keep tabs on prisoners on probation raises questions on the ethicalness of how the technology is deployed. The employ of this innovative technology can be for benevolent welfare-healthcare ends in cases such as those of persons who are old or people with disabilities and neuropsychological impairments such as dementia patients whose personal information can be loaded on these chips to be better assisted when sick or lost (Saner 2018). Furthermore, positive applications of data-driven ICT tools that Saner (2018) notes include “it be[ing] used to prevent harassment and bullying, and to root out bias and discrimination”, both conscious and unconscious biases for the end of making the work place fairer across the board, for all sexes, races, genders, sexual orientations, et cetera. Professor of psychology André Spicer, notes quite truthfully that surveillance has always occurred in the workplace, but this monitoring by personnel in the factory floor or by managers for their subordinates in open-plan offices that are able to be spotted by has been digitised (Saner 2019). However, the caveat herein is the extensive nature of the latter kind of surveillance that possibly extends beyond the confines of the work space and office hours, and also analysing more than just what is done, but how it is done as well (Saner 2019).
There is a historical context and precedence at play in respect to the worries around surveillance and society of control. Michel Foucault theorises that the shift of disciplinary and punitive practices from public displays of overt violence, condemning the body to brutal reminders of the power of the ruling class, to suppressing the body in abstract, supposedly more ‘humane’ forms of disciplinary power, via panoptic surveillance; the watchful, all-seeing eyes of the State and Law and its bureaucratic institutions and their ideologies — the ideological state apparatuses, and the police, army, which serve as the repressive state apparatuses, as theorised by Althusser that maintain the systems of power that are in power (Foucault 1991:4). Contemporary society is constantly being reconfigured, in accordance with the group in power.
Leon Faucher drawing up rules for his “House of young prisoners in Paris” in the late 1750s, scheduling the time to begin day and determined the number of hours of work per day (Foucault 1991: 4–6), this was an exercise of power in regimenting the daily life of prisoners. The economy of punishment was changing to accommodate the industrial revolution, laws were being abolished, modern ‘codes’ were being drawn up (Foucault 1991: 4–7). The disappearance of torture as a public spectacle was one of these changes. This act of sterilization punishment being attributed too readily and emphatically to a process of humanization when in truth it is no more humane or less cruel (Foucault 1991:14). There is a new need for societal control with the advent of a new way of living. Bodies are still controlled, albeit omnisciently, through ideological state apparatuses more than repressive state apparatuses (Foucault 1991:143).
The control of activity is done through the creation of a timetable, in order to establish rhythms/routines, to impose particular occupations, to regulate the cycles of repetition so as to ensure the synergy of habit between the body and mind through the temporal elaboration of the act (Foucault 1991: 145–155). Time penetrates the body and with it all the meticulous controls of power. For time immemorial, social institutions such as religious bodies had been masters of discipline using time as a measure (Foucault 1991: 145–155). With the changing pace of life, time was reordered for industrial labour and intellect extracting purposes (Foucault 1991: 145–155). Time is conceptualised and practised within the neoliberal, capitalist framework so it is measured and paid, so it must be a time without impurities or defects; a time of good quality, throughout which the body is constantly applied to its exercise (Foucault 1991: 145–155). Precision and application are, with regularity, the fundamental virtues of disciplinary time. The religious orders began to alter time by counting in quarter hours, minutes, seconds (Foucault 1991: 145–155). An attempt was also made to assure the quality of the time used: constant supervision, the pressure of supervisors, the elimination of anything that might disturb or distract; it is a question of constituting a totally useful time (Foucault 1991:145–155). The examination transformed the economy of visibility into the exercise of power (Foucault 1991:200–204). Traditionally, power was what was seen, what was shown and what was manifested and, paradoxically, found the principle of its force in the movement by which it deployed that force. Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time, it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory invisibility (Foucault 1991:200–204). In discipline, it is subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen, of always being able to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection. The examination is the technique by which power, instead of emitting the signs of its potency, instead of imposing its mark on its subjects, holds them in a mechanism of objectification (Foucault 1991:200–204).
In a disciplinary regime, on the other hand, individualization is descending: as power becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation rather than commemorative accounts, by comparative measures that have the ‘norm’ as reference rather than genealogies giving ancestors as points of reference; by gaps rather than by deeds (Foucault 1991:205–210). This invisibility of power is no more evident than when we employ Bentham’s unilateral theory, the ‘Panopticon’ and the principle of this architectural figure on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other (Foucault 1991:210–215). The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognise immediately. It serves three distinct functions, which is to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide. It preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Each individual, in his designated place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject of communication. This invisibility is a guarantee of power (Foucault 1991:212–222). The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power (Foucault 1991:230).
So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action or application; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in power situation of which they are themselves the bearers (Foucault 1998:61). Always operating under the assumption that he is being surveilled. It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and deindividualizes power (Foucault 1998:65). Power becomes omnipresent, becomes decentralized in its conception and application. Punishment and, or forgiveness serve as functions and practices of power, and power/knowledge in turn becomes a centre of discourse (Foucault 1998:68).
Foucault (1998:77) shows in fascinating detail the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations (Repressive State Apparatuses), administrative and legal hierarchies (Ideological State Apparatuses) for social control — and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that the comparison between a school and a prison is not purely facetious — prisons, schools, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual’s time and space hour by hour, minute by minute through (Foucault 2002:100). The unverifiable nature of surveillance makes one always operate under the assumption that he is being surveilled. It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and deindividualizes power. Power becomes omnipresent, becomes decentralized in its conception and its (unethical) application without the knowledge and consent of employees in their vocation and possible extension into the domestic space of the home (Foucault 2002:104). Foucault theorises then summarily that through the mechanism of geospatial distributions, discipline and now control requires enclosure, a set space designated as the office, of which in the times of corona has been make-shifted in the home space (Foucault 2002:142). The principle of elementary location or ‘partitioning’ speaks to the nature of the locale is divided for each function and finally the rule of functional sites as interchangeable elements. Discipline, arranges a positive economy; it poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of time: an exhaustion rather than use; it is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces, control societies have adopted this control of activity, and uses digital tools to track and confirm that this is being done, even if it is invasive and unethical to do so.
References:
Finnegan, M. 2020. “The New Normal: When work-from-home means the boss is watching”. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3586616/the-new-normal-when-work-from-home-means-the-boss-is-watching.html?page=2
Foucault, M. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (Sheridan, A. Trans.). London: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. 1998. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Volume I. (Hurley, R. Trans.). London: Penguin Books
Foucault, Michel. 2000. Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Volume 1. (Paul Rabinow, ed.). London: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. 2002. Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Volume 3. (J.D. Faubion, ed.) London: Penguin Books.
Lecher, C. 2019. “How Amazon automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity’”. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse-fulfillment-centers-productivity-firing-terminations
Saner, E. 2018. “Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks — even emotions. Is your boss watching you?”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/14/is-your-boss-secretly-or-not-so-secretly-watching-you
Leave a comment