The Panopticon and Social Media - by W. Keith Campbell

One of the biggest stories in social media last week was some CEO getting busted with a woman who was not his wife at a Coldplay concert. The story is just sadness upon sadness. The guy just wanted to catch a few tunes by Coldplay with his paramour and found himself on the Jumbotron. Instead of playing it cool, he tried to hide. This was captured and shared by maybe hundreds of cameras, turning a clandestine romance into global humiliation. I feel terrible for the children. Thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have happened. Yes, I’m old enough to remember Gary Hart being busted on the boat "Monkey Business" with a woman who wasn’t his wife. So I know that for public figures, especially politicians and Hollywood types, there have always been paparazzi and it has always been hard to maintain a private life. But for low level public figures like officers of public companies (or even academics at state universities like myself) nobody was out there following you to Pizza Hut with video cameras

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