It is widely understood that, as we enter the 21^st century, economic, political and social facets are rapidly changing under the pressures of technological innovation and economic competition. Technological systems such as fiber-optics and satellites have been designed to aid the expansion of neo-liberal markets; provide for the instantaneous movement of information and capital; as well as encourage the rapid consumption and disposal of images, goods and services. Coupled with the culture of the spectacle, this focus on instantaneity, rapid consumption and indiscreet disposability have radically altered our social interactions. This process, in turn, has transformed our collective concept of time and space while paving the way for complete surveillance through a self-inducing discipline. Drawing from the writings of various sociologists, this paper will attempt to explore how and why the database culture of the post-modern has transformed society and what affects this might have for the individual.

The technological innovations since the 1950’s have radically transformed the way society transacts business, consumes products as well as spends leisure time. The networked society, as Castells describes it, is one in which information, money and other commodities instantaneously flow through global networks of fiber-optic cables, satellites and other digital technologies. Unlike the Fordist era of production/consumption that was based upon fixed capital investments of a one-site, pyramidical hierarchy, post-industrial economies are characterized by the flexibility and adaptability of capital and labor processes mediated through technological innovation. This ‘flexible accumulation’ has given rise to an asymmetrical network of concentrated economic and technological power that may be found in global hubs: large urban areas that become the centers of technological innovation, information gathering or capital trading. Some of these hubs, such as New York or Tokyo, are multifaceted as epicenters of more than one of the mentioned categories. In the spirit of flexibility, some of these hubs may lose importance over time as labor and capital emigrate to other areas based on economic or political considerations (See Castells, 1991 and Harvey, 1990).

As Castells has pointed out, “control over knowledge and information decides who holds power in society. Technocrats are the dominant class. . .whose interests are those of scientific-technological rationality and economic growth” under the tenants of  profit making and private accumulation of public wealth.

The technocrats and information brokers define and manipulate space and time for the acquisition of more capital and market-control. The ability to access technology and adapt quickly enables the capitalist technocrat to harness the flow of sequential exchanges, turn over capital quickly and define social interactions across time and space. It is “those who define the material practices, forms and meanings of  money, time and space (who also) fix basic rules of the social game”[1]

          The instantaneity of information, commodity and capital dissemination and retrieval has compressed social space and accelerated shared time not only in the economic sphere of the 9-5 workday, but also in our private lives. Faxes, pages, cell phones--products of the telecommunications revolution-- do not stay in the office space at five o’clock, they travel with the worker to the private space of the home. These ‘essential’ mobile items; the redefining of the ‘9-5’ workday and the recasting of business/ public/private spaces are symbolic of the flexibility, adaptability and mobility of the profit seeking post-industrial society.  

Guy Debord, in The Society of the Spectacle,  theorized the concept of pseudo-cyclical time: comodified, consumable, exchangeable time that is defined by industry/business by “recombining everything. . .which (at one time) was distinct: private life, public life, economic life.”[2] The compression of symbolic time—the rhythmic, collectively shared experience of society--has altered the geographical and spatial relations of individuals while it also eliminated social barriers. In the erratic, often deceptive time of the postmodern, post-industrial era, capitalists have been able to appropriate more labor time (within and out of the ‘9-5’) and therefore acquire more profits, while communicating across historically combative or closed barriers. But this last point must not be overly focused on since we must question what kind of communication is taking place and for whose benefit.

Spatial domination and annihilation is hinged with the acceleration of time in order to gain a greater share of the markets. Through the acquisition of and increased scope of networks, spatial relations can be organized into “efficient configurations of production, circulation. . .and consumption.”[3] As Harvey explains, those who, historically, have been able to remove spatial barriers as well as represent space have been very successful under the tenants of capitalism whether it has been within the space of the factory, railroads or telecommunications. The speed and efficiency of today’s high-tech spatial relations enables capitalists to by-pass national boundaries (therefore by-pass the laws of  the nation); increase the scope and area of their investments; and be able to draw upon a multiplicity of spatial relations: one may own a factory in Indonesia and Mexico that are both wired for instantaneous information exchange with the corporate office in Boston. As both Harvey and Castells suggest, by controlling spatial relations through the network structure, the capitalist class is able to empower their position, while disenfranchising other groups through exclusion or outright dominance: “today, more than ever, the class struggle is inscribed in space. Indeed it is that struggle alone which prevents abstract space from taking over the whole planet and papering over all differences.”[4] 

Foucault’s study of surveillance and discipline may be applied, if not in full measure, then surely in measured portions to the postmodern, net worked society. In describing Jeremy Bentham’s blueprint for the Panopticon, Foucault suggests that the all-seeing, normalizing functionality of Bentham's ideal prison system has been adopted, if only in metaphor, to other social institutions -- hospitals, schools and factories as Foucault suggests. Briefly, the Panopticon is an architectural nightmare. An enclosed space for prisoners of all sorts: vagabonds, drunkards, the insane, Bentham’s structure is circular with windowed cells occupying the outer ring. At the center lies a manned tower so that anyone being held: “a madman, patient, the condemned, a worker or schoolboy” may be seen at any moment of the day. In this structure, the backlighting creates a situation where one may be gazed upon without knowledge: “Visibility is a trap. . .each individual is in his place, securely confined to a cell from which he is seen by the supervisor. . .he is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[5]

The Panopticon is the culmination of the 17^th century project of organizing, labeling and distributing bodies in spatial relations and  controlling the activity of bodies through the use of time-tables, clocks, bells and whistles. In this schema, as Foucault highlights, time is never ‘wasted’; efficiency  is maximized and discipline, that is to say proper training,  is always enforced. In order for discipline (the ability to train) to succeed, Foucault suggests, the individual body  must be controlled through spatial relations: movement discouraged through the separation from other individuals (cubicles or cells utilized) and segmentation from other bodies enforced through the use of tables, graphs, labels and codes. This is to ensure that, at any given time,  the head-master; the owner; the prison guard may “establish presences and absences. . .locate individuals, to set up useful communications. . .compartmentalize bodies in order to inspect them.”[6]

In addition, time must also be controlled so that bodies may be trained. This is done though the refining or compression of time. The time table, the work clock; the bell, the whistle; the punch card, the spoken order, the bugle are symbolic of the segmentation of time according to a schedule of ordered discipline. In order to extract more work; more productivity; more learning; more repetition of action, hours must be pared down to minutes, minutes down to seconds;[7] seconds down to the flow of time when seconds are simply an idea. In this region of control and cyclical  maneuverability, lateness is an offense; quitting early is an offense; idleness is an offense. Foucault writes of disciplinary time as ‘exhaustive time’: “it is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, even more useful forces. . .one could tend towards an ideal point at which one maintained maximum speed and efficiency.”[8] 

As Foucault suggests, “The Panopticon. . .must be understood as a general model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in the everyday life of men” and not simply of the architectural framework.[9] The Panopticon may exist as a metaphor; a symbol; a construction of ideas; an ‘invisible’ network. The timelessness of existing in the prison and the segregation of bodies into cells or cubicles  may be roughly gauged as that of a present day office building: cubicles separating office workers according to degree; computers that are ‘bugged’ by management for rogue e-mails; a focus on streamlining time and activity: so many cold-calls an hour; two 15 minute breaks per day; termination for lateness, etc. One could even suggest that Bentham’s tower is analogous to the corporate suites that rise above the activity of the prisoners but always watching, if not visibly then electronically. David Harvey states it best: “Accurate time-keepers and accurate maps have long been their worth in gold, and command over space and times is a critical element in any search for profit.”[10] If a manger/owner can  instantaneously gain information from separate spatial configuration; control movement of goods, images and money through a grid-like network; gaze upon the movements of individual workers then  they become Post-modern magicians able to turn action into profit easily, efficiency and with quick turn-around times. The Panopticon, in this arena, becomes the field of economic, social experience.

The ‘body-machine’ complex that Foucault alludes to is of special interest here: in the compression of time and space, workers, especially, are part-and-parcel of the working instruments they utilize:  pagers, cell phones (both of which are worn as identification marks), lap top computers and fax machines to name a few. In the networked society, we are rarely separated from the company or the work. Although referring to the particular effects of databases,  Mark Poster suggests in The Second Media Age suggests that subjects are acted upon by technology as if they are “present somehow inside the computer.”[11] Our identities are reconfigured through the economic compression of time/space and, through extension, the compression of public and private spheres. There is no longer a ‘work time’ and ‘personal time’; taking one’s work home with them is no longer a metaphor, it is a reality. As David Harvey theorizes in the Postmodern Condition, because of the acceleration of flexible production/consumption/accumulation, one must be flexible enough to insert themselves into the network at any give moment; the body must be hooked into the network with no space to waste: the maps have been drawn (and are constantly reconfigured) and all time has been accounted for. In order to ‘succeed’ it is becoming clear that one must be “attached to (a) communications network at all times”; we are becoming digitized, decentered, capable of being “acted upon by computers at many social locations without the least awareness of it”.[12]  

The role of the database cannot be overlooked when analyzing the role of the information network. The database, as Mark Poster defines it, is a limited, restricted yet powerful form of information exchange. Data is processed through a network of  fiber optics, phone lines, satellites and digital processors instantaneously.[13] Credit cards have become great tools for collecting information; with a swipe of the card, information is being sent, collected and transmitted back via telecommunication lines in a matter of milliseconds. Once collected, the data is collated into fields that record specific information about an individual: lifestyle portraits based on past consumption, memberships in clubs or social organizations; magazine subscriptions. Further, this information is shared with other databases in order to gain a ‘full composition’ of individuals: the individual is now identified and the information is held for future application.[14] 

 Poster has theorized the database as the “Super-Panopticon.” Like Bentham’s ideal structure of surveillance, the database normalizes information and places an individual’s identity into ‘cells’ for future appropriation and action; the database is constantly assessing the situation by adding more information about the individual while the individual has no awareness that this is taking place: the network, like the prison guard in the central tower, is invisible to the individual. Technology is the sunlight (through the windows of the cells in Bentham’s dream) that gives away our every movement so that we may be acted upon later if need be. The database is a self regulating, global system that is not affected by time or space; it works, at least on the surface, not as a coercive measure but as voluntary system; and it promises the freedom of universal access of information. However, if one looks under the surface; under the promise of an optimistic veneer where accumulation, speed, information gathering and processing are progressive qualities, we may understand the database as a vehicle for constant surveillance; an obstruction to privacy; an instrument that reconfigures our identities and our sense as autonomous, rational subjects; and in the words of Foucault, “a permanent, exhaustive and omnipresent force of surveillance. . .a faceless gaze that transforms the whole social body into a field of perception. . .a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or time.”[15]

The reconfiguration of the self through the language of the database is simply one aspect of what Mark Poster describes as the “familiar modern subject (becoming) displaced by the mode of information in favor of one that is multiplies, disseminated and decentered, continuously interpolated as an unstable identity.”[16] This phenomenon has been examined by sociologists, historians and other social scientists throughout the last twenty years. The “post-modern” self,  is one in which the self is an ever-changing flux of identity labels that are symbolized in the fluid motion of images and symbols. Whereas Poster sees the signification of database and computer language in reconfiguring the subject, Harvey, and to a lesser extent Jameson, see the compression of time and space and the rapid turnover and acceleration of production, exchange and consumption of images and capital as the motivator for defining the post-modern subject. It can be stated that both views, working in tangent, can be applied to any discussion of the individual in contemporary society. The emptying out of referents in language that Poster theorizes must be seen through the prism of the spatial control and time compression that Harvey discusses: individuals recognize themselves through brand images, symbols and database statistics as consumers while at the same time investing their time and bodies through the flux of flexible production/accumulation as mentioned above. Further, as Sherri Turkle highlights in her studies, with the use of computerized communications such as Multi-User Dimensions (MUDS) on internet spaces and the rapid development of AI (artificial intelligence), identities may be defined, multiplied and deconstructed by the individual user. While some, like Turkle, see these changes of identity construction as a positive, progressive movement that enables a diversity of voices to interact with each other, others see this movement as potentially dangerous.

To be sure, the political economy of capitalism is alive and well. As an important indicator, I turn to the research conducted by Robert McCesney in his book, Rich Media, Poor Democracy. The media, which has become the vehicle for the transmission of images, sound bites and elusive branding, has transformed itself into a hyper-commercialized (to use Robert McChesney’s term), global oligopoly. In the free and unregulated marketplace, media outlets, including radio, newspaper, television, publishers and internet providers have blurred the distinction between editorial fare and commercialized interest. This has compromised the quality of information provided. By generated “light entertainment”, the conglomerates of media have “generated a passive, depoliticized populace that prefers personal consumption to social understanding and activity, a mass more likely to take orders than make waves”[17]. McChesney might make too much of the issue by claiming that the media creates the passive, depolitixed voices . The media project is driven by corporate interests and, in the same breath, protects corporate interests. The technology that makes it possible for media to saturate daily life; for managers to accelerate spatial relation and time; for companies to accelerate the turnover of capital and provide a ‘super-panopticon’ also makes possible the multiplicity and deconstruction of identity. As McChesney states, “combining a belief in technological magic with a faith in the magical markets makes for a heady brew”.[18]

The post-modern self is depolitized, image conscious, flexible to the point of acquiescence; an emptied self. It is sleek as polished ebony and so quick-silver fast. It might be an imaginative, creative, cut-n-paste self but it holds no ideals, beliefs, explanations for the existence of itself. It is a fully social self: it is defined through the fragments of images and sound bits that it is exposed to through media channels and advertisements; it holds allegiance to no one but is defined through the parameters of a social system that is controlled by the Super-Panopticon of the capitalist  system. Flowing through various networks simultaneously, the postmodern self is defined by the ‘cash nexus’ of political economy. It does not heed the warning of social crises tendencies: the accelerating personal and corporate indebtedness; the ‘yuppie-flu’; the e-commerce bust; the all seeing surveillance of databases. And by focusing on ‘diversity’; ‘multiplicity’; ‘deconstruction’, leftist academics also buy into the postmodern front. As Harvey puts it, “The very definition of a genuine rainbow coalition defines a unified politics which inevitable speaks the tacit language of class, because this is precisely what defines the common experience within the difference.”[19]  The post-modern self is interested in being but never becoming.