In his book The Transparency Society (2012), South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han once again builds on Michel Foucault's panopticon metaphor to develop the concept of a digital panopticon. This concerns a new type of all-encompassing visibility, which allows everything to be monitored electronically, beginning with the privacy of each individual. This includes social media networks and Google services: Earth, Maps, Glass, Street View, and Youtube.
Hyperconnected South Korea is home to the world's fastest internet speeds and is the boldest testing ground for the transparency society, becoming some sort of "holy land" for the digitally dependent homo sapien, whose mobile phone is an extension of their own hand, used to "explore" the world.
Panoptical control of disciplinary society worked by employing a linear viewing perspective from a central watchtower. The prisoners could not see into the tower - nor distinguish the watchman - and would have preferred not to be watched, in order to enjoy some sense of freedom. However, the digital panopticon loses its characteristic perspective: in the cyberspace matrix, everyone is able to see other people and everyone puts themselves on display for others to see them. The only element of control that analogue vision ever had disappears: now you are being surveilled from all angles. But control continues to exist - in another form - and it could be even more effective. Each person gives others some exposure to their privacy, creating mutual visibility. This all-encompassing visibility "degrades 'transparent society' into a [...] society of control: everyone controls everyone," wrote the philosopher.
(...) The essay The Transparency Society ends with Han suggesting that the world is evolving, like a large-scale panopticon where no walls separate the inside from the outside.