Panoptic Themes Present in PowerPoint Presentations

Abstract

This paper explores how PowerPoint Presentations that display the synoptic
and analytic modes of power in both the individual format of the slides within
the slideshow and through the presentation of a PowerPoint Presentation to
an audience by a presenter, according to the definition given by Barton and
Barton in “Modes of Power in Technical and Professional Visuals” are instruments
of power. Furthermore, this paper will also explain how the PowerPoint
Presentation as an instrument of power functions similarly to that of the Panopticon
Prison based on how Michel Foucault describes it in the book, Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison because of the way it utilizes the
panoptic mechanism.