The datafied hand in our health

Abstract

This article looks at a smart ring as a window into how contemporary datafication in fitness and medical wearables is informed by the longer history of notions of fitness and the datafication of health within the practice of medicine. After introducing some of the concerns arising from the history of eugenics, specifically out of disability studies critiques, and the more recent organizing of health through data-driven algorithmic medicine, as well as discussing the difference between non-optional wearables and their use as part of transhumanism, I briefly consider how wearables could be a site of intervention, to seize rather than relinquish power over our datafied bodies.