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Abstract
Increases in the use of information media mark them out as significant forces on social and individual living. Information is continually being shared and harvested through the growing presence of information technologies across society. The technological aspects of these processes have led to questions regarding the extent to which technologies, and latterly information, are coming to define individuals, beyond the biological boundaries of bodies. Key to these debates is our understanding of the relationships between bodies and technologies. The increase in informational activity through engagements with technologies has led to a body of surveillance literature developing that has followed a course from the early panopticon flavor of CCTV-focused theory (watching bodies) to the networked assemblage flavor of the surveillance of information (bodies becoming digital). This paper takes up these questions in focusing on the role of information as a mediating force in designating transformative relations people have with technologies, and how to conceptualize ‘bodies’ in relation to claims as to the extent of technologically mediated surveillance therein. Key to this endeavor is drawing on ontologies of technology through focus on modern information technologies and conceptualizing the relationship between affective technological and embodied consciousness. The work of Gilbert Simondon will be drawn upon, culminating in the paper concluding that embodied consciousness lags some way behind technological consciousness and that a focus on the former is necessary to understand fully the multiple ways they can act as forms of technologically mediated surveillance.