2026-09-18 · essay
The Eye You Can Jam, and the Eye You Cannot — Foucault's Panopticon vs. Achievements and Daily Streaks
Why do streaks and achievement lists move us so much? In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes a cell that may or may not be watched from a central tower. Power has to be visible and unverifiable at once — so the watcher ends up installed inside the person being watched. The Talos Principle (Croteam, 2014) turns that blueprint into a landscape: turrets and drones you can silence with a jammer, and Elohim's voice, for which no jammer is ever issued. Which led to the finding of the week — an achievement list is not a list of prohibitions, it is a list of things not yet done.
