Agency and the Digital Alter Ego

Abstract

Wearables produce a body of data controlled by the user of the wearable, and the institution creating the device or collecting the device information, and community members engaging with the devices. This article examines the privacy policies of the top five wearable vendors of 2016 to analyze how corporations describe the bodies of digital data they amass through surveillant assemblage. Results indicate four points of agency which surround bodies of digital information: data as alter ego, data under personal control, institutional power, and community. Although scholarship often emphasizes that entities of power control information, and wearable companies emphasize the user's ability to control their information, there are multiple ways the authors can think about the data, and not addressing the complexity of data can lead to limited ideas about agency, identity, surveillance, and visibility.