Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Navigating Creepy versus Cool in Wearable Biotech

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how personal data protections figure into the design process of wearable technology. The data question is becoming especially important in the face of recent innovations in biotechnology that capitalize on the new fungibility of biology and electronics, in which new biotech wearables capitalize on the ability to analyze and track changes in blood, sweat, and tears. Interviews and participant observation with wearable tech designers, data scientists, fashion tech entrepreneurs, and select experts in cybersecurity and intellectual property law, reveal a range of approaches to data protection in design within the culture where wearables are beginning to merge with biotech. While a few respondents were extremely vigilant about protecting consumer’s privacy, the majority felt that when consumers ‘opt in’ to data sharing, they should be cognizant of the risks. From their perspective, it is not necessarily the producer’s responsibility to protect user's personal data. These attitudes present a problematic logic, which leaves users vulnerable to data exploitation. The paper concludes by arguing that this laissez-faire culture is the environment in which wearable biotech is being developed and will be deployed. This emerging technology raises issues about bodies, data, and ownership in crucial need of analysis and critique to push its move into the mainstream toward more equitable and inclusive ends.

KEYWORDS:

• Big data
• surveillance/privacy
• mobile technology
• interactivity
• computer-mediated-communication
• communication studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Elizabeth Wissinger http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6873-5933

Notes

1 Radio Frequency identification via tiny computer chips able to track items at a distance.

2 This paper draws on 22 interviews with fashion and tech designers, data scientists, and wearable tech entrepreneurs, as well as select experts in cybersecurity and intellectual property law. The interview data is combined with participant observation at fashion tech summits, conferences, and meet ups in the New York City. The term ‘fashion tech’ broadly refers to both wearing technology as fashion and technological innovations in the fashion industry.

3 Quote is from a personal interview a few weeks after the event.

4 The debate about this concept’s meaning and use is widespread, and ongoing. For a sampling of the issues at hand, see Bucher and Helmond (2018), Davis and Chouinard (2017), Evans et al. (2017), Nagy and Neff (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by City University of New York Chancellor's Research Fellowship, Faculty Publication Program Research and Writing Grant, Professional Staff Congress of CUNY Research Award.