Bringers of Order

Wearable technology, including smartwatches, biometric trackers, and body cameras, are often touted as helpful tools that record, produce, and analyze data about daily life to improve our individual habits and health or to solve serious public issues. In this book, James N. Gilmore argues that these lofty promises mask forms of surveillance and power.
 
Charting the implementation of wearables in areas of accessibility, health, sports, labor, law enforcement, and infrastructure, Gilmore demonstrates how these devices have been positioned as authoritative means for producing knowledge about human activity. Drawing on news reporting, advertising, film and television, company reports, and legal policies, he shows how this knowledge production reproduces three distinct modes of power: normalcy, surveillance, and solutionism. Bringers of Order empowers readers to examine the complicated ways our devices reshape how we think about our lives and our ethics and why we should resist companies analyzing our personal data.
 

James N. Gilmore is Associate Professor of Media and Technology Studies in the Department of Communication at Clemson University.

Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction: Bringing Order to Life 
1 • Health, or: Bringing the Hospital to the Wrist 
2 • Accessibility, or: Personalization and the Promotion of Hearables 
3 • Sports, or: Monitoring Physical Activity on and off the Field 
4 • Labor, or: Workplace Surveillance Down to the Millisecond 
5 • Law Enforcement, or: The Opacity of Body-Worn Cameras in Upstate South Carolina 
6 • Infrastructure, or: The Datafication of Disney World 
Conclusion. Culture, or: Order as a Way of Life 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index