Author:
Schüll, Natasha Dow
Abstract:
Over the last 5 years, wearable technology – comprising devices whose embedded sensors and analytic algorithms can track, analyze and guide wearers’ behavior – has increasingly captured the attention of venture capitalists, technology startups, established electronics companies and consumers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted 2 years running at the Consumer Electronics Show and its Digital Health Summit, this article explores the vision of technologically assisted self-regulation that drives the design of wearable tracking technology. As key artifacts in a new cultural convergence of sensor technology and self-care that I call ‘data for life’, wearables are marketed as digital compasses whose continuous tracking capacities and big-data analytics can help consumers navigate the field of everyday choice making and better control how their bites, sips, steps and minutes of sleep add up to affect their health. By offering consumers a way to simultaneously embrace and outsource the task of lifestyle management, I argue, such products at once exemplify and short-circuit cultural ideals for individual responsibility and self-regulation.
Document:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2015.47
References:
Adams, V., Murphy, M. and Clarke, A.E. (2009) Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28(1): 246–265.
Albrechtslund, A. (2013) Self-Surveillance: How Quantification Practices and Monitoring Technologies Produce Subjectivity. Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), 9–12 October, San Diego, CA. Unpublished conference paper.
Andrejevic, M. and Burdon, M. (2014) Defining the Sensor Society. University of Queensland. TC Beirne School of Law Research Paper No. 14–21.
Armstrong, D. (2014) Chronic illness: A revisionist account. Sociology of Health and Illness 36(1): 15–27.
Beer, D. and Burrows, R. (2013) Popular culture, digital archives and the new social life of data. Theory, Culture & Society 30(4): 47–71.
Berson, Josh. (2015) Computable Bodies: Instrumented Life and the Human Somatic Niche. London: Bloomsbury.
Blastland, M. and Spiegelhalter, D. (2014) Measuring microlives. Slate 8(September), http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/09/calculating_life_expectancy_on_the_micro_level_the_impact_of_smoking_red.html, accessed 16 October 2014.
Boesel, W. (2012a) The woman vs. The stick: Mindfulness at quantified Self 2012 Cyborgology blog, 20 September, http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/09/20/the-woman-vs-the-stick-mindfulness-at-quantified-self-2012/, accessed 9 September 2013.
Boesel, W. (2012b) Meaning-making through numbers: Emotional self-quantification. Cyborgology blog, 13 September, http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/09/13/meaning-making-through-numbers-emotional-self-quantification/, accessed 9 September 2013.
Cheney-Lippold, J. (2011) A new algorithmic identity: Soft biopolitics and the modulation of control. Theory, Culture & Society 28(6): 164–181.
Consumer Electronics Association (2015) The U.S. Consumer Electronic Sales and Forecast 2010–2015. Arlington, VA: Consumer Electronics Association.
Crawford, R. (1980) Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services 10(3): 365–388.
Crawford, K., Lingel, J. and Karppi, T. (2015) Our metrics, our-selves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18(4–5): 479–496.
Cukier, K. and Mayer-Schönberger, V. (2013) The rise of big data: How it’s changing the way we think about the world. Foreign Affairs 92(3): 28–40.
Deleuze, G. (1992 [1990]) Postscript on the Societies of Control. October 59, Winter: 3–7.
Dumit, J. (2012) Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define our Health. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Foucault, M. (1973) The Birth of The Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1980) The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.
Fox, S. and Duggan, M. (2013) Tracking for Health. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Washington DC: Pew Research Center.
Friedman, L.M. (1994) Republic of Choice: Law, Authority, and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Goetz, T. (2010) The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. New York: Rodale.
GovLab (2014) The GovLab index: The networked public. 20 June, http://thegovlab.org/the-govlab-index-the-networked-public-updated-and-expanded-2/, accessed 23 August 2014.
Greene, Jeremy. (2007) Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Halpern, O., LeCavalier, J., Calvillo, N. and Pietsch, W. (2013) Test-bed urbanism. Public Culture 25(2): 272–306.
Hansen, M. (2014) Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hunt, A. (2003) Risk and moralization in everyday life. In: R.V. Ericson and A. Doyle (eds.) Risk and Morality. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, pp. 165–192.
Kang, J. and Cuff, D. (2005) Pervasive Computing: Embedding the Public Square. 62 WASH. & LEE L. REv. 93, 94.
Koopman, C. (2014) Michel Foucault’s critical empiricism today: Concepts and analytics in the critique of biopower and infopower. In: J.D. Faubion (ed.) Foucault Now: Current Perspectives in Foucault Studies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, pp. 88–111.
Koopman, C. (2015) The Algorithm and the watchtower. The New Inquiry, 29 September, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-algorithm-and-the-watchtower/.
Lawler, R. (2013) In defense of the HAPIfork. TechCrunch, http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/12/in-defense-of-the-hapifork/, accessed 21 September 2014.
Ledger, D. (2014) Inside wearables, Part 2. Cambridge, MA: Endeavour Partners. Industry Report.
Ledger, D. and McCaffrey, D. (2014) Inside wearables: How the science of human behavior change offers the secret to long-term engagement. Cambridge, MA: Endeavour Partners. Industry Report.
Levina, M. (2012) Healthymagination: Anticipating health of our future selves. The Fibreculture Journal 20: 143–157.
Lupton, D. (2012) M-health and health promotion: The digital cyborg and surveillance society. Social Theory & Health 10(3): 229–244.
Lupton, D. (2013a) The digitally engaged patient: Self-monitoring and self-care in the digital health era. Social Theory and Health 11(3): 256–270.
Lupton, D. (2013b) Understanding the Human Machine. IEEE Technnol. Soc. Mag 32: 25–30.
Lupton, D. (2013c) Quantifying the body: Monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies. Critical Public Health 23(4): 393–403.
Lupton, D. (2014) Apps as artefacts: Towards a critical perspective on mobile health and medical apps. Societies 4(4): 606–622.
Lupton, D. (2015) Managing and materialising data as part of self-tracking. Blog post, 22 March, https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/managing-and-materialising-data-as-part-of-self-tracking/.
Lupton, D. (2016) The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Mackenzie, A. (2008) The affect of efficiency: Personal productivity equipment encounters the multiple. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 8(2): 137–156.
Mayer-Schönberger, V. and Cukier, K. (2013) Big Data: A revolution That will Transform How we Live, Work, and Think. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Melichar, L. (2014) Sparking Behavior Change to Create a Culture of Health. Talked delivered to MIT Media Lab Seminar “Tools for Wellbeing,” 11 April.
Mobihealth (2014) In-depth: Q2 2014 digital health state of the industry, http://mobihealthnews.com/36044/in-depth-q2-2014-digital-health-state-of-the-industry, accessed 20 December 2014.
Mol, A. (2009) Living with diabetes: Care beyond choice and control. Lancet 373(9677): 1756–1757.
Nafus, D. and Neff, G. (2016) Quantified Self. In Essential Knowledge Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nafus, D. and Sherman, J. (2014) This one does not go up to 11: The quantified self movement as an alternative big data practice. International Journal of Communication 8: 1784–1794.
Oudshoorn, N. (2011) Telecare Technologies and the Transformation of Healthcare. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oxlund, B. (2012) Living by numbers: The dynamic interplay of asymptotic conditions and low cost measurement technologies in the cases of two women in the danish provinces. Suomen Antropologi 37(3): 42–56.
Pantzar, M. and Ruckenstein, M. (2015) The heart of everyday analytics: Emotional, material and practical extensions in self-tracking market. Consumption Markets & Culture 18(1): 92–109.
Potts, T. (2010) Life hacking and everyday rhythm. In: T. Edensor (ed.) Geographies of Rhythm: Nature, Place, Mobilities, and Bodies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. (2006) Biopower today. BioSocieties 1(2): 195–217.
Rahns, R.G. et al (2013) Mobile Health Market Trends and Figures 2013–2017. Report on the Commercialization of mHealth Applications, Vol. 3. Berlin, Germany: Research2Guidance.
Rich, E. and Miah, A. (2014) Understanding digital health as public pedagogy: A critical framework. Societies 4(2): 296–315.
Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, N. (2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, And Subjectivity in The Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rose, N. (2001) The politics of life itself. Theory, Culture and Society 18(6): 1–30.
Ruckenstein, M. (2014) Visualized and interacted life: Personal analytics and engagements with data doubles. Societies 4(1): 68–84.
Schüll, N. (2014) Obamacare meets wearable technology. MIT Technology Review, 6 May.
Schüll, N. (Forthcoming) Keeping Track: Sensor Technology, Self-Regulation, and the Data-Driven Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Schwartz, B. (2005) The Paradox of Choice: Why more is Less. New York: Ecco.
Singer, N. (2015) Technology that prods you to take change, not just collect data (an interview with Natasha Dow Schüll). New York Times, Business Section (Technophoria) 19 April, p. B3.
Sunstein, C.R. (2015) Choosing Not to Choose: Understanding the Value of Choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swan, M. (2012) Health 2050: The realization of personalized medicine through crowdsourcing, the quantified self, and the participatory biocitizen. Journal of Personalized Medicine 2(3): 93–118.
Swan, M. (2013) The quantified self: Fundamental disruption in big data science and biological discovery. Big Data 1(2): 85–99.
Thaler, R.H. and Sunstein, C. (2008) Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Till, C. (2014) Exercise as labour: Quantified Self and the transformation of exercise into labour. Societies 4(4): 446–462.
Topol, E.J. (2012) The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution will Create Better Health Care. New York: Basic Books.
Topol, E.J. (2015) The Patient will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in your Hands. New York: Basic Books.
van Dijck, J. (2014) Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance and Society 12(2): 197–208.
Viseu, A. (2013) Wearable computers and the informed informational body. In: D. Bulatov (ed.) Evolution and Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age. Karliningrad: The National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Baltic Branch, pp. 122–135.
Viseu, A. and Suchman, L. (2010) Wearable augmentations: Imaginaries of the informed body. In: J. Edwards, P. Harvey and P. Wade (eds.) Technologized Images, Technologized Bodies. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 161–184.
Watson, S. (2013) Living with Data: Personal Data Uses of the Quantified Self. Thesis completed in requirement of M.Phil at Oxford University.
Weisz, G. (2014) Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century: A History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.