Articles on Panopticon

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As more employers turn to software to track hybrid and remote staff, evidence suggests the visibility it provides comes at the cost of trust. (Unsplash+)

Tracking your employees doesn’t make them more productive

A growing body of research shows electronic monitoring rarely improves performance and reliably increases employee stress and distrust.
Chris Martin of Coldplay performs during Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour at D. Y. Patil Sports Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Jan. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Caught on the jumbotron: How literature helps us understand modern‑day public shaming

The online reaction to the extra-marital affair that was caught on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert raises the question: why does infidelity, especially among the powerful, provoke such public outrage?
Harvard’s recent CRISPR experiment isn’t just a new frontier for science – it’s also a new take on how we conceive of human history. gopixa/Shutterstock.com

Will whoever controls gene editing control historical memory?

The CRISPR gene-editing technique raises new questions about how we measure time and conceptualise history. Here, a cultural theorist takes on the philosophical side of this scientific breakthrough.
Tracking what you stop to pay attention to and what you ‘don’t see’ can tell us a lot about what might be going on inside your mind.

The Panopticons are coming! And they’ll know when we think the grass is greener

Eye-tracking technology helps us understand how people interact with their environment. This can improve policy and design, but can also be a tool for surveillance and control.

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