For some, the technology-augmented human is merely the start of a slippery slope: a continuum that runs through RoboCop and cyborgs to AI and the singularity. This bias towards the sci-fi ignores that humans have been tech-augmented since they started wearing jewellery. What I'm interested in here is not the mixing of humanity and technology, but the use of the latter as both a prosthetic and a regulator. In other words, this is about the evolution of biopower in the sense that Michel Foucault used that term.
Watch Your Phone - Watches are part of the personal brand, so the core market for the smartwatch may be the intersection of those that take personal branding seriously and are into geek-chic and the "quantified self". The first person to wear both Google Glass and a smartwatch can expect to be stoned in public ...
Through a Glass Darkly - The wider political context of wearable computing is the tension between privacy and transparency. To be effective, democracy needs both: the ability to determine without coercion (free assembly, the secret ballot) and the ability to interrogate and limit those who seek a mandate ...
The Surveillance Economy - The emblem for this future is Tony Stark in his seaside mansion: the tech-augmented body in a tech home ...
How Would You Like to Pay for That? - We have now reached the stage, with contactless payment that depends on an expensive phone or watch, where mere cards, like cash and cheques before them, have become a sign of inferiority ...
Time is Money - The overwork of the "cash-rich, time-poor" is not the product of modern technology, as is often claimed, but a cultural choice: the architecture of email is not realtime and the marginal increase in accessibility brought by mobile phones is exaggerated ...
