Google and Google Scholar searches suggest that one of my earlier articles on related subjects published in 1995 as “The Global Panopticon?” in the journal Alternatives has disappeared from the internet. To make this more widely available this article is posted here since – at least in my view – some of its concerns endure (it involves a dialogue with the likes of Bentham, Marx, Foucault and various theorists of neo-liberalism).
Nonetheless some of its notes on the internet may seem outdated or even quaint in light of the massive amplification of surveillance/networking technologies related to both military and commercial developments such as Facebook, Google etc. I think it can still, however, be read as an early theorization of some of the contradictions of contemporary capitalist development, e.g see Part III, especially the section on “The risky business of global finance”, where I noted its propensity to sudden collapse because of its self-regulation, financial innovations (e.g. derivatives) and capture of state interests by Wall Street in the USA, to say nothing of the lack of effective or prudential global regulation of finance.
Here is a PDF copy of that piece: https://stephengill.com/news/wp-content/uploads/THE-GLOBAL-PANOPTICON.pdf