It’s the mid-70s and a French philosopher and historian by the name of Michel Foucault (15 October 1926-25 June 1984) has just hammered out a book concerning the birth of the prison system. The work tracks the evolution of the social and technological mechanisms used to entrench discipline in Western Society. His ideas serve up an effective theoretical means of understanding the dystopian world conceived by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Moreover, Foucault has devised a philosophical matrix through which the existence of Big Brother can be perceived in familiar contemporary contexts.
Discipline and Punish asserts that we live in a state of perpetual imprisonment, drawing connections between the mechanisms of law enforcement in modern society and the panopticon. A type of prison building dreamed up in the Eighteenth Century, the central characteristic of the panopticon was that the guards could observe prisoners while prisoners were unable to see the guards. The bottom line was that the prisoners never knew when the guards were looking. Fewer guards were needed, costing taxpayers less money. Everybody was happy.
Needless to say, Foucault would have drawn profound conclusions concerning the evolution of enforcing the speed limit on South African roads. Once upon a time, traffic cops crouched behind bushes and cables were intermittently stretched across roads in unexpected locations. When it was discovered that the income generated by speeding fines was not commensurate with the cost of conducting these stealth operations, the government turned to the panopticon method, slapping up signs like the one above.
As there were no cameras to go with the signs, people quickly realised that there weren’t any guards on duty. Big Brother was caught napping and all the mice came out to play. When the cameras arrived, the farmer’s wife raised her carving knife and speeding vehicles broke wildly to avoid persecution. However, they remembered where the cameras were located and formulated a strategy of slowing down in all the right places. In a flash, the intuition of South African drivers sped to the lofty philosophical heights of Foucault.
