Predicting Covid-19: wearable technology and the politics of solutionism

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 crisis has helped facilitate and amplify a set of articulations between technology, public health, and culture. Among these connections is the idea that wearable technologies – with their attendant claims to know more and know better about the relationship between human bodies and daily life – are able to predict the onset of COVID-19 symptoms and, in doing so, to help mitigate its spread. This article considers this imaginary through a case study of the Oura ‘smart ring’ and Oura’s partnership with medical researchers and the National Basketball Association. Through a close, critical reading of popular press reports, I examine how Oura is imagined as a productive articulation between technology and public health capable of compensating for the failure of the United States government to implement adequate COVID-19 testing. This analysis demonstrates one way cultural studies scholars might interrogate and map the politics of this unfolding conjuncture – that is, to understand how a series of public failings is offloaded to private companies in an effort to develop quick solutions that only further entrench existing crises.

KEYWORDS:

• Oura
• wearables
• prediction
• articulation
• solutionism
• discourse

Disclosure statement

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

Further information

This Special Issue article has been comprehensively reviewed by the Special Issue editors, Associate Professor Ted Striphas and Professor John Nguyet Erni.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James N. Gilmore

James N. Gilmore is an assistant professor of media & technology studies in the Department of Communication at Clemson University. He researches the cultural politics of technology and daily life.