Antibiotics and Existential Technology
In a sense, what is the difference between antibiotics that make you fat and existential wearable technology?
On both a literal and metaphorical level, they are very similar. Both modify the functions of your body by many other organisms through unknown, anonymous masses. Antibiotics modify the bacterias within your body, changing your metabolism and the ways that your body processes food. With Steve Mann’s WearCam, “I was not knowingly taking pictures of anyone and I would need to check with my managers (thousands of other people I did not even kn0w) in order to determine whether or not pictures were remotely acquired” (21). If you replace photos with bacteria, and pictures with fat, then the WearCam serves a similar act that antibiotics do.
Although, unlike antibiotics, he chose to wear the WearCam, when most people are given antibiotics without choice. And, in both cases, just as he claims “out mastery over our own destiny (our freedom) came from our very lack of control over the situation,” antibiotics have been a medical miracle (of sorts) and radically increased life expectancy.
In relation to this article (which is helping me with my new vegetarian diet, so thank you) people are given the choice to consume these antibiotics. We can all find out what is in the food we eat (I watch enough Frontline that I already know) so I do think we choose to buy food that we know isn’t great, the same way Mann chooses to wear WearCam when he knows it will lead him to be hassled (or worse).
But since we both clearly watched Bigger Than Life this weekend, I think this post is amazing. Both antibiotics and surveillance seem to be this thing that we have to deal with/are given but aren’t given control over. And no one will take the blame. The same way Mann talked about responsibility being given to mangers or head offices that weren’t available to the average person, doctors claim that they have no answers and no alternatives to a lifetime on antibiotics. “Studies show…” Yet somewhere, someone is making money off of the “unprotected individual,” losing their freedom to invasive (bio)technology.