ispy, IBM, Bodyfat and RoboCop

Photo of "Robocop" riding his steed through the south side of Detroit snapped by Alex Fugazi

Mark Andrejevic’s ispy has me intrigued.  He sounds like he’s got his finger right on the clicker. Off the bat his book opens by establishing a Foucauldian perspective of power (capture) and control, this framework is quickly buttered with observations about how the internet is felicitating societal shifts. The introduction (which is all I’ve gotten to read thus far) has some keen observations about the ramifications of digitalization.  

Broadening the consensus of others, he writes we have entered, “an era in which we are told that the consumer is being enthroned even as he or she is being put to work as never before. (15)”

Where this gets interesting is in the examples about where our submission places power, and how that will change our lives. There’s a discussion about how massive digital footprints are changing our relationships with business, self, and society.  Andrejevic is realistically worried.

Take two examples I saw yesterday: 

1.       IBM’s “science fantasy” commercials.  There a bunch of these; scientists acting as godlike maestros making technology come alive, baby monitoring systems that tell doctors (AND IBM) everything about the baby- so it’ll be okay. Sounds good. Who doesn’t love babies?

2.      

  While the first example seems sanguine, the sharp downside of our digital world is on the same blade. Take this NPR report about the latest wave of, dare I say- interactive- digital scales, which take focused readings (ie how much fat is in your arm) of bodies and automatically slaps them online. Not only does the scale company have that information to sell to fitness and whatever companies; but it can also be mined but anyone else online, I’m hoping Andrejevic’ll flesh this out a bit more… it sounds like some extreme bio-politics- stay tuned. 

  Here’s a transcript from some of the NPR piece. Note the reporter’s nervous question about “Robocop”

SPITZER: So then the question is how to keep track of all the data. That's where the latest Tanita scale comes in.
Mr. ERICKSON: This is called a BC1000.
SPITZER: Sounds like something out of "Robocop," just a little bit.
Mr. ERICKSON: Yeah.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ERICKSON: It even looks that way, doesn't it? Because you look at it, and you say, well, it's a scale, I guess, but there's no display. We've provided the ability now for the scale to communicate wirelessly to some other device that's going to display your data.
SPITZER: That device could be a PC or a smartphone.
Another scale, by competitor Withings, can automatically upload your daily weigh-ins to Twitter. Yikes. The companies pitch these devices as ways to charge of your health...

Yikes indeed.