Those in charge of Google – the most ambitiously panoptic of digital companies, aiming to "organise the world's knowledge" – are pretty explicit about their android-aspirant, robo-inflected motivations.
From the upper floors, there are almost panoptic views towards the city and the West End; the vast floorplates form a series of belvederes from which one looks out not on urban grunge, but on Mayor Boris Johnson's neo-picturesque kingdom of supposedly world-class urban makeovers, hubs and icons.
But readers who love his broad panoptic sweep over the course of human history may feel its absence in the early chapters, which smack a little too much of an anthropology primer.
That the renowned author of such post-modern, panoptic novels as White Noise and Underworld also writes work for the stage is one of the better kept secrets in Theatreland, at least in this country.
Branch's panoptic approach exposes telling juxtapositions: we see Johnson approving the reluctant recommendation of Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach for a public declaration on voting rights, and then ordering his ever-sanguine Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, to "go ahead tonight" and commence bombing Vietnam.
During a game, Bradley's eyes are always a glaze of panoptic attention, for a basketball player needs to look at everything, focussing on nothing, until the last moment of commitment.
There was plenty of press around in 1961, and lots of cameras, but it was still only the dawn of the era of the unblinking media eye, our own panoptic regime, in which every twitch of the celebrated is monitored and made instantly available for mass titillation.
Is Orlando truly worthy of Rosalind, with her panoptic wit?
As a system, permaculture impressed him as panoptic and transformational.
Eerily, his single panoptic-style eye, peering out from beneath the police helmet, is reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of God so commonly depicted at the top of Enlightenment paintings.
This is where the city of 2025 becomes a bit more like The Jetsons, albeit with the flying cars, space age robots and two-hour working week replaced with sinisterly omniscient/panoptic corporations, algorithmic governance and queues to get into train stations.
