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Carceral Nation: Twenty Years from Blog Post to Book

In December 2006, I published an article on this blog about mass incarceration, racial disparities in the American prison system, and a concept I was trying to name: the carceral citizen, the person whose freedom exists in a state of permanent conditional revocation. The article was one entry among many in the Boles Blogs Network, which at its peak ran fourteen blogs across a range of subjects. One of those fourteen was called Panopticonic.

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From Wrist to Hand and Back Again: Apple Hands You a Future as Your iWatch Watches You

I love it when Apple unwittingly, but always purposefully, hands us our future — for a steep admission price. Watching our new watch-centric Futureworld unwind yesterday — in the din from a bright new set of iPhone 6 twins — was a surreal and foreboding experience. Apple takes us by the hand and we lovingly follow, and play along, all while paying up — and we believe we’re all better for it in the effervescent end; but are we?

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Tracking Students with RFID

When I was in school, there were no metal detectors greeting us at the door nor armed police — and children were in their classrooms at the expected times. Those that were not got detention and eventually were suspended from school. We knew that in order to get an education our rears needed to be in our seats, attention on the teacher.

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The 1.8 Gigapixel Flying Panopticon

A couple of years ago I wrote an article explaining how you, average person in life, are most likely being photographed numerous times without your knowledge. You are being caught as people take photos of the street with their camera phone, and perhaps even intentionally if you happen to be wearing something amusing or do something that attracts attention — or maybe you are the object of someone’s crush on your shared daily commute.

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Bloodwatch: Waiting, Watching and Wattling

A friend of mine has owned a blood lab for the past couple of decades.  She enjoys her job of working with people and she’s good at it.  She lives in a small town on the East Coast and the other day she shared a “new thing” that’s starting to happen in her small lab that bears greater witness to the ever-changing world suffocating us.

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The Greplin Effect

Yesterday, we published a Greplin review in our Panopticonic blog, and the surge in traffic for that review was incredible.  We had 1,102 views for that review alone.  I call that massive influx of readers “The Greplin Effect.”  Here’s a comparison chart over time that shows you the massive Greplin bump we experienced yesterday and today:

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Panopticonic Orgasm in CounterPunch

We confess to getting a little thrill whenever we see a mainstream media outlet use the made up title of this Panopticonic blog in print on their pages.  The latest media monster to invoke our “Panopticonic” is CounterPunch in a fine article — A Bloody Awful Question of Liquidity — written by Stephen Martin.

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Panopticonic in the Washington City Paper

We love it when other news publications use the made-up word for this blog that is our title and purpose — Panopticonic — and we appreciate it when other powerful writers use our fake work in their print.  In the past, we have spread our love out to Andrew Leonard at Salon.com, and today, we celebrate Lydia DePillis at WashingtonCityPaper.com who took “Panopticonic” delight to print on January 25, 2011.

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Panopticonic Defines Salon Magazine

We know “Panopticonic” is not really a word.  “Panopticonic” is really a “word” I invented for my Boles Network Blog by the same name.  When I started the Panopticonic blog, “Panopticonic” appeared nowhere on the internet and that word failed to return any results in a Google search.  I do so love it so, though, when I get a Google Alert in my Inbox showing me that — “Panopticonic” — is being colloquially employed as a “real world” in a real publication like Salon Magazine.

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Blubeekuss is Not a Word

One of the most annoying things in an allegedly literate human world is when a person invents a word for a word that already has meaning and context and then tries to press that definition into others in everyday use.  I’m not talking about words like “Memeingful” or “RelationShaping” or even the colossal “Panopticonic” — all of which have base value in an original colloquial expression — no, I’m talking about “words” like “Blubeekuss” that are made up to be a synonym for “bra.”

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