In the book The transparency society (2012), South Korean philosopher Byung Chul Han sets off again from Michel Foucault's panoptic metaphor to develop the concept of the digital panoptic. It refers to a new complete visibility that allows to see everything through electronic media, starting with the privacy of every person. This encompasses social networks and Google tools -Earth, Maps, Glass and Street View-, and YouTube.
The hyperconnected South Korea has the fastest internet speed in the world and it's the boldest laboratory of the transparency society, transformed into a kind of "Holy Land" of the homo-digital, whose cell phone is an extension of the hand from which he "explores" the world.
The panoptic control of the disciplinary society used to work through the linear perspective of sight from a central tower. The prisoners did not see each other -nor the guard- and would have preferred to not be observed so as to have some freedom. However, the digital panoptic loses its perspective character: in the cybernetic matrix everyone sees everyone else and exposes themselves to be seen. The only control point that the analogue sight had disappears: now everything can be seen from all angles. But the control continues -in another way- and would be even more effective. Because every person gives everyone else the possibility of seeing their privacy, generating a mutual vigilance. This complete vision "degrades the transparency society turning it into a society of control. Everyone controls each other", wrote the philosopher.
(...) The essay of The transparent society ends considering that the world develops like a great panoptic where no wall separates the inside from the outside.