This chapter discusses the implications of wearable technologies like Google Glass that function as a tool for occupying, commodifying, and profiting from the bio- logical, psychological, and emotional data of its wearers and those who fall within its gaze. We argue that Google Glass privileges an imaginary of unbridled exploration and intrusion into the physical and emotional space of others. Glass’s recognizable esthetic and outward-facing camera has elicited intense emotional response, partic- ularly when “exploration” has taken place in areas of San Francisco occupied by residents who were finding themselves priced out or evicted from their homes to make way for the techno-elite. We find that very few trade and popular press articles have focused on the failure of Glass along these dimensions, while the surveillance and class-based aspects of Google Glass are fundamental to an accurate rendering of the product’s trajectory and the public’s emotional response to this product. The goal of this chapter is to foreground dimensions of surveillance and economics, class and resistance, in the face of unending rollouts of new wearable products designed to integrate seamlessly with everyday life—for those, of course, who can afford them. Ultimately, we believe more nuanced, intersectional analyses of power along race, class, and gender must be at the forefront of future research on wearable technologies. Our goal is to raise important critiques of the commodification of emotions, and the expansion of the surveillance state vis-à-vis Google’s increasing and unrivaled information empire, the longstanding social costs of which have yet to be fully articulated.

Hello Barbie, the new interactive doll from Mattel, has some security flaws. As the Internet of Things becomes a reality, manufacturers must make security a priority.

The Online Trust Alliance released a security and privacy checklist for the 50 million smart devices to be sold and gifted over the holiday season.

Well THAT didn't take long.

Computers should not treat their owners as adversaries.

Company encouraged parents to use the pictures and chats with the apps it sold.

Vtech is a ubiquitous Hong Kong-based electronic toy company whose kiddy tablets and other devices are designed to work with its cloud service, which requires parents to set up accounts for their k…

Using an Internet connection and speech-recognition technology, Hello Barbie, the latest...

The Environmental Protection Agency should have listened to Ron Weasley’s dad. In the Harry Potter books and films, Arthur Weasley is a bureaucrat in...

The Internet of Things is starting to emerge. You can tell it’s just starting, because we’re still using the ungainly name ‘‘Internet of Things.’’ It’s one of those coinages that tells you that we …

The question of our age might turn out to be the reverse of the Turing test: will people become programmable like machines?

Our cars, fridges and even bank safes are connected to the Internet. It’s making us vulnerable in new and alarming ways.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wanted to dramatize how hard GPS surveillance would be for our nation’s founders to envision. It would take a “very tiny cons

I was once in charge of one of the first Coca-Cola machines on the Internet. This was the late 20th century at MIT, where we thought it was pretty awesome that you could, in theory, make the machine dispense a Coke from your desktop computer without having to walk over to it. (Of course you still had to walk there to pick up your Coke in the end.)

Link to phdcomics.com

Mattel is to release a WiFi-connected Barbie that uses voice-recognition software to allow the doll to converse with kids.  Privacy advocates are worried about how that information could be used.