Wired magazine recently posted an article titled “A Wearable
Gadget Implanted in Your Hand Isn’t as Freaky as You’d Think,” but the title is
deceiving. Not everyone who reads it will take the same viewpoint as Margaret Rhodes does.
The
invention is a small digital tattoo called UnderSkin “decked out with even
tinier sensors” placed on the palm of the wearer. Rhodes likens it to wedding
bands and Dick Tracy’s watch, romanticizing the coming of an age of science
fiction reality.
 |
| The UnderSkin Digital Tattoo (Wired) |
The
tattoo could be a cool idea if it wasn’t so smart. It can be used to lock
doors, pay at registers and monitor health. Its sensors can also acknowledge
and distinguish the unique relationships between the wearer and another person
by the type of hand contact made between the two, “because it lives within you
it acquires your history”. The idea that a computer chip of some sort can learn
social nuances and turn them into data is freaky, and in the realm of
cybernetics.
Cybernetics
is the study of the relationship between animal, human and technology that was
coined in 1940. It wasn’t until the 60’s that the study yielded the concept of “considering
the observer as part of the system” (Hayles, 147). The observer being the
human, and the system being technology. This integrative technology also works
off of the cybernetic perspective that “human and animal bodies, no less than
cybernetic mechanisms, are media because they too have the capacity for
storing, transmitting, and processing information” (Hayles, 148). With these
digital tattoos, the human is the power source and the media that the data is
collected from.
The
article cites the biggest concerns with UnderSkin as the uncertainty of where
one would acquire the device (in a tattoo parlor or a hospital?) and how, once
acquired, one would update the integrated technology. Nowhere does it mention
how strange it would be getting used to the product. It would undoubtedly
interrupt the “flow” of everyday life (intake, processing and output of media) as
Uricchio describes of the invention of the remote control device interrupting
the flow of daily television viewing. The UnderSkin would definitely need time
for the masses to assimilate to such an invasive foreign object being
integrated into part of the body.
Then
there is the concern of privacy that is hurried over with the mention of a
“bitcoin-like block chain,” which one can only hope would keep the government
from gaining access to everyone’s information in a fascist manner…
The
point is, this invasive cybernetic technology is here.
Works Cited
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Cybernetics.” Critical Terms for Media Studies. 145-156
Rhodes, Margaret. "A Wearable Gadget Implanted in Your Hand Isn't as Freaky as You'd Think | WIRED." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 18 Oct. 0014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Uricchio, “Television’s Next Generation,” Spigel and Olsson,
pp. 163-182
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