Foucault opens "Discipline and Punish" with a graphic discussion of the execution and desecration of a regicide, and then explains how that model has shifted over the past three centuries to emphasize a medico-juridical disciplinarity acting on the soul of the criminal. In the chapter "Panopticism", he extrapolates this former model of punishment to characterize "antiquity" as a "civilization of spectacle" in which the many could inspect the few. In the modern age, he claims the great problem of surveillance is giving access to a multitude to the few/the individual. Other theorists have described modern Western civilization as the "society of the spectacle", notably Debord and Baudrillard. Is there a way to reconcile the tensions between these theorists? Could discipline in the modern age perhaps be characterized as spectacle insofar as everyone can watch everyone else, thus allowing access to an infinite amount of vision to each individual?

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Cameras and microphones are prevalent in today's world. There's hardly a place on earth that has been untouched by surveillance cameras, microphones, reality TV shows, etc. Especially with reality TV shows and implicitly with cameras and microphones, these devices require an audience. Everywhere we go nowadays, we are used to the idea of having an audience. With all of this "naturalization" of surveillance, can we still care if we are being watched or heard? That is, if we understand that we can be watched or heard almost every minute of every day, can we still worry and think about this surveillence at every point time? Or do we eventually become immune to its effects?
This makes me think about what a Panopticon would be like in today's world. I don't know too much about prisons, but I feel they are not places of self-discipline and self-seclusion, but of violence and groups of inmates. Is this an effect of a Panopticon in today's world? Or do prisons now not bother with watching and listening to their inmates because it won't work in the intended way anymore? Perhaps the Panopticon model is useless in today's world when applied to prisons, but still true in other models. I am still trying to think of a place where a Panopticon would be useful (perhaps hospitals...? but even with that there are problems), though.
Furthermore, it seems as if "inmates" would also grow accustomed to a Panopticon setup even in Foucault's times if an "inmate" spent a long enough time in a Panopticon. With the older discipline and punishment system, new punishments could be thought of when the old ones were of no use. With the Panopticon, what happens when the "inmate" becomes used to being watched? Perhaps the watcher starts listening to every "inmate", too, but what then?
It is difficult to think of answers to these questions because it requires an extrapolation of the Panopticon into the world today and further knowledge of older working Panopticons.

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