Wearable technologies, brand community and the growth of a transhumanist vision

ABSTRACT

By enabling users to digitally monitor their health and behaviour, wearable technologies foster the perspective of the quantified self, a cultural phenomenon emphasising personal improvement through self-tracking. This vision, in turn, provides a basis for new forms of social engagement. In this netnographic study, we explore a brand community for users of the Fitbit wearable device. Our analysis reveals two structural dynamics – material agency and quantitative anchoring – which create a foundation for what we label ‘accidental transhumanism’, a transitional movement towards a transhumanist vision based on self-quantification, self-extension, and integration with technology. We further highlight the social engagement mechanisms, including motivating empowerment, friendly rivalry, and trusting engagement, that are built upon this foundation. Leveraging these findings, we theorise a novel model of the interaction of consumers and system artefacts in socio-technical assemblages. We refer to this novel phenomenon of brand community centred on self-quantification as quantified self-in-community, and consider both the beneficial and potentially deleterious impacts that it presents.

KEYWORDS:

• Quantified self
• online brand communities
• accidental transhumanism
• consumer culture
• socio-technical systems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. As we note throughout this analysis, wearable technology users do not necessarily explicitly avow transhumanist principles or perspectives. Rather, we argue that the adoption and use of wearable technologies promotes the transhumanist vision through the principles of self-quantification, self-extension, and integration with technology (Fillard, 2020; Sharma, 2019). Thus, wearables engender what one might call an ‘accidental transhumanism’.

2. The study of socio-technical systems and associated socio-technical theory reflect the inextricable intertwining of human beings and technological artefacts in contemporary work systems (Ropohl, 1999; Trist, 1981). From a socio-technical perspective, humans actions and the artefacts employed are mutually constitutive (Klein, 2014).

3. In accordance with the principles of grounded theory method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), the theoretical perspectives employed in this analysis emerged through the process of data analysis and as a reflection of the theoretical scanning and sensitivity of the authors. Indeed, the final framing of the research questions for the study emerged through an organic analytical process.

4. To a significant extent, the Internet of Things (IoT) incorporates several of the other technologies, relying on the autonomous communication of diverse physical objects using the existing Internet infrastructure (Hoffman & Novak, 2018; Nguyen & Simkin, 2017).

5. In this regard, Bostrom’s (2005) summation is quite insightful: ‘This vision, in broad strokes, is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives’ (p. 4).

6. An important distinction can be drawn between the concept of the accidental transhumanist and mere technology consumption. For our vision of accidental transhumanism to apply, the use of technology would need to be directed towards enhanced control over one’s life through self-quantification, self-extension, and capability enhancement.

7. https://www.fitbit.com/us/about-us. Retrieved on 12 August 2021.

8. A summary of coding and categories across the phases of data analysis is provided in Appendix B.

9. The ‘10,000 steps a day’ goal set as the Fitbit default dates back to 1965 when a Japanese professor invented an early pedometer, the Manpo-kei or ‘10,000 steps meter’ (Rosenbloom, 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Duygu Akdevelioglu

Duygu Akdevelioglu (PhD – Rochester Institute of Technology) is an Assistant Professor at the Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).She received her Ph.D. in Marketing at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine in June 2018. Duygu’s research, which focuses on social media, technology consumption, social networks, and consumer communities. Her research aims to provide an understanding of culturally shaped relationships in online consumptionscapes, explore changing structural properties in social media networks, and develop theory that examines consumer engagement in consumer communities. Her research has been awarded best competitive paper award at the Consumer Culture Theory 2017 Conference, published in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing and Journal of Marketing Management.

Sean Hansen

Sean Hansen (PhD – Rochester Institute of Technology) is a Professor of Management Information Systems and Chair of the Department of MIS, Marketing, & Analytics for the Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, New York, USA). He earned his PhD from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include human-computer interaction, health IT, and distributed cognition. His research has been published in the many leading scholarly journals, including MIS Quarterly, Information System Research, Decision Sciences, Journal of the AIS, Information Systems Journal, Communications of the ACM, and Information & Organization.

Alladi Venkatesh

Alladi Venkatesh (PhD – University of California, Irvine) is professor of marketing at the Merage School of Business and Associate Director, Center for Digital Transformation University of California, Irvine, USA. He is also Honorary Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. Professor Venkatesh’s publications have appeared in major journals; Management Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Communications of the ACM, Marketing Theory and others. He was the founding co-editor of Consumption, Markets & Culture. His research focus is on social media and the emerging consumer environment.