The Panopticon reaches within: how digital technology turns us inside out

The convergence of biomedical and information technology holds the potential to alter the discourses of identity, or as is argued here, to turn us inside out. The advent of digital networks makes it possible to ‘see inside’ people in ways notanticipated and thus create new performance arenas for the expression of identity. Drawing on the ideas of Butler and Foucault and theories of performativity, thispaper examines a new context for human-computer interaction and articulatespotentially disturbing issues with monitoring health rather than wellbeing. It arguesthat by adopting explicitly social framings we can see beyond the idea of medicalinterventions for health to recognize the political implications of the newcategorizations and their implementation in code. In the process, it critiquestraditional ways of understanding machine-body relations within the field oftechnology design