Nihilism and Technology by Nolen Gertz

Author:Nolen Gertz
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2012-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

6.3 The objectification economy

According to Nietzsche’s aforementioned definition of petty pleasure, there is a connection between mechanical activity and petty pleasure, as he believes the “medication” of the latter is “often employed in association with the previous one.” The question of whether there is a similar association to be found between data-driven activity and pleasure economics can be answered if we return again to the Fitbit.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the Fitbit’s information about calories burned, steps taken, and heartbeats per minute are more readily understood by users if seen not as markers of the abstraction we call fitness but as scores in a video game. Having already turned our bodies into avatars and our lives into games, it is easy to see how quickly we can take the further step of turning these scores into monetary values, our bodies into commodities, and our lives into businesses. For once we have turned health into a competition, it only makes sense to turn that competition into a profit.

This idea of health-as-profit is precisely what we find in Achievement. Achievement is a website that turns fitness tracking into fitness money-making:

Get Points for Being Healthy

We’ve awarded over 100 million Activities. Here’s the most common ways to earn:

Walking/daily steps

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