The Panopticon:

 

The 'hub' of this OnLine multi-user Learning Environment is inspired by and based on Bentham's architecture for the Panopticon. Within this virtual environment the 'fluid architecture' of the Panopticon becomes the perfect form to support a social learning interaction where the surveyors co-operatively survey themselves.

As a "technology of power" this Panopticon retains the enlightened potential of the Bentham design, in that it is intended to provide support for human betterment and transformation. It also achieves Poster's (Poster, 1990) 'Superpanopticon', in that the technology of power in this instance is manifest through digital virtual space or "circuits of communication" and that it is a "system of surveillance without walls, windows, towers or guards".

The convergence of this digital and virtual space with the glass, brick and steel of 'real' technologies of power is focused in this Panopticon by the acquisition and incorporation of similar 'dream buildings' drawn from human history and the projected future.

Information of Bentham and the Panopticon can be found @ the Bentham Project:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/ the Panopticon