Jeremy Bentham’s invention, the panopticon, should never have become a metaphor. The panopticon at its core remains a prison. When Jeremy Bentham introduced it, the majority of its benefits that he presented came as a direct consequence of the isolation that prisoners faced. Bentham brings up the inability of prisoners to communicate with each other and thus unable to start riots or plan future crimes. The surveillance of the tower in the middle is secondary. The idea that since the prisoners are unsure of when they are being surveilled and thus they are forced to live their lives as if they are under constant supervision, is a whole separate concept. The panopticon is a collection of three key ideas: the state of isolation, the state of constant surveillance and the stress of not knowing when surveillance is happening. It is possible to argue that surveillance is constantly happening today, however the isolation of prisoners that prevents any sort of communication and interaction with prisoners does not model our society at all. The definition of a society is a group of people living together in a community. As community is an integral aspect of human civilization, the panopticon metaphor falls apart. Additionally, the premise of anxiety is that the prisoners are fully aware of the higher power and its ability to spy on them. However in today’s society oftentimes we are unsure of the extent to which the higher power, usually the government, is able to see us. The influence of a higher authority is thus mitigated as it seems intangible, unlike the constant glare of the illuminated tower. The prisoners under total control of the higher authority do not model the hesitant balance of power between the people and the government.