o have a wage means to be part of a social contract, and there is no doubt concerning its meaning: you work, not because you like it, or because it comes naturally to you, but because it is the only condition under which you are allowed to live. But exploited as you might be, you are not that work.

The right of sovereignty was the right to take life or let live. And then this new right is established: the right to make live and to let die

The discourse of disciplines is about a rule: not a j u r i d i c al rule derived from sovereignty, but a discourse about a natural rule, or in other w o r d s a norm. Disciplines w i l l define not a code of l a w , but a code of normalization, and they w i l l neces- s a r i l y refer to a theoretical horizon that is not the edifice of l a w , but the field of the h u m an sciences.

This nonsovereign power, w h i c h is foreign to the form of sovereignty, is " d i s c i p l i n a r y " power. This power cannot be described or justified in terms of the theory of sovereignty.

A power independent from sovernty

This make s it possible to transcribe, into j u r i d i c a l t e r m s , discontinuous obligations and tax records, b ut not to code continuous surveillance; it is a theory that makes it possible to found absolute power around and on the basis of the physical existence of the sovereign, but not continuous and permanent systems of surveillance.

It does this in several ways: because it can reduce the number of those who exercise it, while increasing the number of those on whom it is exercised. Because it is possible to intervene at any moment and because the constant pressure acts even before the offences, mistakes or crimes have been committed.

o it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. SIMMILAR TO THE PANOPTICON IT IS OT A PRISON NORE IS THEIR CONFINEMENT BUT THEIR IS CONSTANT SUPERVISION AND PERMINET VISIBILITY THAT CAUSES THE FUNCTIONING OF POWE

Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.

They are 7 like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.

If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the great Confinement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects. Rather than the massive, binary division between one set of people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and a ramification of power.

. If it is still necessary for the law to reach and manipulate the body of the convict, it will be at a distance, in the proper way, according to strict rules, and with a much ‘higher’ aim.

is seen as resulting from its inevitability, not from its visible intensity; i

It is one thing to capitalize on the coolness of a Black artist to sell (overpriced) products and quite another to engage the cultural specificity of Black people enough to enhance the underlying design of a widely used technology. This is why the notion that tech bias is “unintentional” or “unconscious” obscures the reality – that there is no way to create something without some intention and intended user in mind (a point I will return to in the next chapter).

What about a White history month? White studies programs? White student unions? No longer content with the power of invisibility, a vocal subset of the population wants to be recognized and celebrated as White – a backlash against the civil rights gains of the mid-twentieth century, the election of the country’s first Black president, diverse representations in popular culture, and, more fundamentally, a refusal to comprehend that, as Baldwin put it, “white is a metaphor for power,” unlike any other color in the rainbow.

I think the dominant ethos in this arena is best expressed by Facebook’s original motto: “Move Fast and Break Things.” To which we should ask: What about the people and places broken in the process? Residents of Silicon Valley displaced by the spike in housing costs, or Amazon warehouse workers compelled to skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles.26 “Move Fast, Break People, and Call It Progress”?

For this reason, we should consider how private industry choices are in fact public policy decisions. They are animated by political values influenced strongly by libertarianism, which extols individual autonomy and corporate freedom from government regulation.

Racism thus becomes doubled – magnified and buried under layers of digital denial.

By pulling back the curtain and drawing attention to forms of coded inequity, not only do we become more aware of the social dimensions of technology but we can work together against the emergence of a digital caste system that relies on our naivety when it comes to the neutrality of technology. This problem extends beyond obvious forms of criminalization and surveillance

These tech advances are sold as morally superior because they purport to rise above human bias, even though they could not exist without data produced through histories of exclusion and discrimination.

a shift from explicit racialization to a colorblind ideology that masks the destruction wrought by the carceral system, severely limiting the life chances of those labeled criminals who, by design, are overwhelmingly Black. “Criminal,” in this era, is code for Black, but also for poor, immigrant, second-class, disposable, unwanted, detritus.

Michelle Alexander’s (2012) book that makes a case for how the US carceral system has produced a “new racial caste system” by locking people into a stigmatized group through a colorblind ideology, a way of labeling people as “criminals” that permits legalized discrimination against them. To talk of the new Jim Crow, begs the question: What of the old?

and the gap persisted across occupations, industry, employer size – even when employers included the “equal opportunity” clause in their ads.6 With emerging technologies we might assume that racial bias will be more scientifically rooted out. Yet, rather than challenging or overcoming the cycles of inequity, technical fixes too often reinforce and even deepen the status quo.