Biohacking

Repeatedly, when medical scientists propose the authorization of new biotechnologies, fears and hopes emerge alongside new impasses, legal frictions and uncertainties. This applies, for example, to cutting-edge therapies potentially capable of treating chronic diseases and, hence, of substituting pharmaceuticals that are currently in use (sometimes paradigmatically). While navigating between this scepticism towards regulatory authorities and reassurances of faith in science, which biopolitical agendas do proposed biotechnologies enact and disseminate in contemporary health innovation arenas? This panel aims to explore the impacts of new health technologies on different societies and how, in turn, multiple actors affect new biotechnologies, including their evaluation processes, design and related health policies. The panel invites contributions that address aspects of the development, circulation, and co-regulation of novel biotechnologies as relatable to forms of bionetworking (for instance judicialization, biohacking, infrastructuring, and digital activism). Bionetworking practices comprise collaborative relationships between scientists, patients, their caretakers, and other actors (including biological, legal, and entrepreneurial ones), to support and/or disqualify promising biotechnologies. In light of this, the panel provides a platform to discuss the actuality and uses of concepts linked to the STS-field of biocitizenship like: political economies of hope; life assemblages; and adoption space. It looks to discuss controversies in areas such as vaccinology, regenerative medicine, gene therapy, translational and precision medicine, microbiome-based therapies, and experimental therapies more broadly. A central point of reflection concerns how tensions between different ways of assessing the efficacy and innovativeness of proposed biotechnologies, and of co-producing medical evidence, might become co-constitutive of biosocialities.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg reconstructs the plausible faces of the carriers of these macromolecules, which she identifies through biological analysis and cross-checks with the assumptions underlying contemporary forensics. It’s her series of portraits of strangers, Stranger Visions (2012-13), which has more widely brought to the public attention the practice of the artist and biohacker, and her critique of a genetic determinism that, although based on the latest technologies, is no less than the last in a long line of practices for classifying human beings into categories for the least contingent. While large-scale DNA collection in criminal investigations hit the headlines of the European press and the double helix of the DNA emoji has just been reoriented after igniting the scientific community, the New York artist gives us the ins and outs of her last two projects: Probably Chelsea (2017) and T3511 (2018).

Prima parte di un saggio dedicato alla pratica di costruzione dell' Individuo Postumano, tramite utilizzo di Biohacks e Wearable Technology ()Tecnologie Indossabili). IN questa prima parte vengono presentati alcuni Biohacks attualmente realizzabili.

В статье рассматривается феномен биохакинга. Помимо прояснения на полевом материале, что именно подразумевается под этим понятием в России, авторы фокусируются на особенностях знания биохакеров и его распространения, исследуя систему социальных взаимосвязей и процессов, разворачивающихся в настоящее время он- и оффлайн. Биохакинг может проявляться как множество частных попыток взять заботу об эффективности собственного тела и ума на себя, т.е. как “персональное знание”, что видится частью растущей тенденции DIY (Do-It-Yourself – сделай сам), но вместе с тем он оказывается вовлеченным в формирование “коллективного/социетального знания”. В публичном пространстве биохакинг пытается апеллировать к “научному/лабораторному знанию”, а также связывается с индустриями биомедицинских и информационных технологий.

Recommended Citation Delwiche, Aaron A.; Barnett, Evan; Coe, Andrew; Crim, Patrick; Doshier, Kendra; Dudley, Christopher; Ergun, Ender; Funkhouser, Ashley; Gray, Cole; Hellman, Sarah; Key, John; Kradle, Christopher; Lynch, Patrick; McAllister, Shepherd; McCullough, Mark; Michaelson, Justin; Miller, Alyson; Murdoch, Robin; Passer, Aaron; Rios, Maricela; Schluckebier, Laura; Smiley, Raelle; Truelove, Andrew; Bartle, Richard; Newitz, Annalee; Sedia, Ekaterina; Shaviro, Steven; and Sirius, R.U., "Reality Hackers: The Next Wave of Media Revolutionaries" (2010). Faculty Authored and Edited Books & CDs. 1. https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1

The genetics revolution that will transform our healthcare, the way we make babies, the nature of the babies we make, and ultimately our evolution as a species has already begun. It will arrive far sooner than most of us think and will transform our lives and the world around us in ways we can hardly imagine - and we aren't ready. If you have a sense that the genetics revolution is important but recognize you need to know more about what’s happening, what’s at stake, what this means for you, and what you should be doing now to prepare.

Could this be the most important book of our generation?

A collaborative, interdisciplinary research project,  Open Source Estrogen  combines biohacking and speculative design to demonstrate the entrenched ways in which estrogen is a biomolecule with institutional biopower. It is a form of biotechnical civil disobedience, seeking to subvert dominant biopolitical agents of hormonal management, knowledge production, and anthropogenic toxicity. The project begins with a speculative question: what if it was possible to make estrogen in the kitchen? From this seed arises more fundamental questions about who is producing hormones, whose bodies are affected, and how environmental hormones exist already as a state of toxicity. While issues of body and gender sovereignty are deeply at stake, endocrine disruptors termed ‘xenoestrogens’ pervade our environments due to petrochemical agro-industrial and pharmaceutical forces. These xeno-molecules change the morphology of our bodies and bodies of non-human species, evidencing a malleability inherent to nature but alien to our prescribed notions of (eco)heteronormalcy. In response to the “molecular queering” performed by estrogen, facilitated by dominant hegemonic forces, the project initiates a public dialogue through DIY/DIWO (do-it-yourself/do-it-with-others) biohacking and artistic intervention. Using speculative design, iterative workshopping, and kitchen performance,  Open Source Estrogen  employs these tactics to create new subjectivities for living in an increasingly queer world. From capitalist xeno-forces arise xeno-solidarities, capable of collectively hacking the systems of hormonal colonization.

Edited by Aaron Delwiche, and authored by nearly two dozen students at Trinity University, the anthology Reality Hackers: The Next Wave of Media Revolutionaries asks a number of important questions about emerging technologies. Should citizens have the right to be truly anonymous on-line? Should we be concerned about the fact that so many people are choosing to migrate to virtual worlds? Are injectable microscopic radio-frequency ID chips a blessing or a curse? Is the use of cognitive enhancing nootropics a human right or an unforgivable transgression? Should genomic data about human beings be hidden away with commercial patents or open-sourced like software? Should hobbyists known as "biohackers" be allowed to experiment with genetic engineering in their home laboratories?

Special seminar guests included Annalee Newitz, Richard Bartle, Ekaterina Sedia, Steven Shaviro, and R.U. Sirius. Linked to a seminar series of the same name, the course was made possible with a generous grant from the Martha, David, and Bagby Lennox Foundation.  This book includes student writings, stories and articles written by our guest speakers, creative projects (e.g., stories, photographs, performance art, documentaries, and machinima animations) and a treasure trove of related works from the creative commons.

El biohacking es un movimiento ciudadano que acerca el conocimiento y la práctica experimental de las ciencias biológicas a un público no especializado. El presente artículo propone visibilizar al biohacking como un tipo de transhumanismo y no solo como un movimiento influenciado por este último. Para ello se analiza la constitución, historia, prácticas y sistema moral del movimiento. Tras comparar los resultados con la definición de transhumanismo, se encontró una semejanza en las hipótesis de ambos y una adaptación de los valores transhumanistas al quehacer biohacker. El resultado fue la identificación del biohacking como un tipo de transhumanismo. Biohacking is a grassroots movement that brings the knowledge and experimental practice of biological sciences to a non-specialized public. This article seeks to identify biohacking as a type of transhumanism and not just as a movement influenced by the latter. To do so, it examines the constitution, history, practices, and moral codes of the biohacker movement. Subsequently, it compares the results with the definition of transhumanism, finding points of similarity in the hypotheses of both, as well as an adaptation of transhumanist values to biohacking. It concludes by identifying biohacking as a type of transhumanism.

In contemporary philosophy and bioethics the human enhancement topic is extremely popular. Some of the analyses and reflections do not leave the specialist circle, which is not a positive phenomenon as the discussion about our common human future should be open also to those who do not have scientific or philosophical background. This lacuna can be filled by literature, which allows to portray some ideas and projects in a more approachable way. The book makes evident that the images of the (post)human and the (post)human society should be subject to a complex analysis because under the surface of the literary images we can trace the presence of a utopian discourse reposing on particular ontological , anthropological, ethical and social presuppositions, worth further evaluation.
Rev. Grzegorz Hołub (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow)
The book is situated at the intersection of the literature studies, culture studies, philosophy and sociology. It analyses the titular evantropian-human enhancement-project in a broad range of juvenile fiction, showing how the novels for young audiences are an "in vitro" test for hypothetical and imagined futures. The author argues that this fiction can to a considerable extent shape the common beliefs not only about the future but above all about science, technology, medicine, aesthetics and values, which subsequently influence the readers' perspectives and decisions. The conclusions can be of help for the scholars in literature and culture, but also more broadly: for educators, psychologists or simply parents interested in what contemporary juvenile fiction has to offer to their children. Barbara Klonowska, the the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Science and technology are converging with centralized political and economic interests in research fields and industries such as neurology, weapons manufacturing, AI, biosurveillance, and human augmentation. This convergence is international in scope and entails a technoscientific intensification of anti-democratic governing procedures. It therefore poses an international challenge to democracy. In this paper, I critically survey diverse applications of a key governing procedure according to which this convergence is being engineered. I also highlight apposite features of the political/libidinal economy through which it operates. To do so, I merge Achille Mbembe's analyses of necropolitics/necropower with Deleuze and Guattari's diagrammatic analyses of paranoic-fascisizing procedures of unconscious social production, linking both to the IoT. With the latter established as a universal infrastructure, necropower deploys global and specific (in contrast to partial and nonspecific), anti-democratic integrative procedures in both scientific R&D and geopolitics to decode the human brain, hack biosystems, and engineer social apartheid.

Doctoral student at University of Alberta.
Mind & Life Institute fellow with immersive experience in Contemplative Science and contemporary trends in the utilization ofTibetan embodied practices for health and healing.

Extended CV available on request.

Transhumanism is a philosophical system that proposes the use of advanced technologies directly in the human body to modify and improve its biological condition. That is the core idea of transhumanism and it can be adopted by various ideological systems in different ways. It will depend on their ethical approach and what they define as "improvement". In this article we will quickly review the difference between transhumanist philosophy, Transhumanism and Transhumanisms.

Camera Obscura & the artefacts of the invisible is part of a research project that aims to create new modes of representations in the age of the Anthropocene.

The Camera Obscura is a DIY, (bio)hacked, opensource tool that uses the “blackboxed” dialogue between bacteria and toxic matter as non-humannarrators (I use non-human carefully here, meaning that we humans failed telling liable stories about our damaged
planet). By shifting the narrator, we discharge a responsibility shirking society to confront the fact, mourn the loss and seek for alternative futures.

By merging electronic media, toxic artefacts and bioengineered organisms, this interactive installation uses bacteria as witness of an ecological shift that was caused by a massive spill of 60 tones of mercury in the Rhone valley since the 1930’s. Since then, the incident has been overall poorly managed and unspoken at social, political and / or economical level. Back in 2015, workers of the A9 highway, unveiled the dormant evidence laying under the mud at the river side in Turtig, Raron (Vaud, Switzerland).

Tutors: Dr. Sachiko Hirosue and Daniel Sciboz.
Made with Biodesign for the Real World (BDRW): Sachiko Hirosue, Robin Scheibler. A project hosted at Hackuarium biohackerspace (HKRM), Univercité (UC).

Video Shooting and montage: Simon de Diesbach, Fragment.in.
Photos: ©Raphaëlle Mueller, 2017.

Special thanks to Sachiko Hirosue, Daniel Sciboz, Michael Pereira, Nicolas Nova, Robin Scheibler, Marc Wettstein, Raphaëlle Mueller, Prof. Dr. Jan Roelof van der Meer and Simon de Diesbach.

We are experiencing a technical revolution in biotechnology that will change the way we live as much as any technological advance in human history. Advances in gene sequencing, gene editing, and gene synthesis have shifted our relationship with the building blocks of life. This new science, synthetic biology, is in its early stages but has already created distinct threats and opportunities in US national security. It promises advances in materials science, manufacturing, logistics, sensor technology, medicine, health care, and human augmentation while simultaneously increasing the possibility and severity of man-made pandemics through unintended consequences in genetic experiments or improved bioweapons. This article proposes a National Strategy for Synthetic Biology (NSSB) to defend the homeland and promote American strength by building security into synthetic biology and by making synthetic biology an investment priority. The United States can achieve greater security by regulating and controlling synthetic biology to prevent unintended consequences while investing in people and industries to maintain a security advantage in the field.

This book is an investigation of the Swedish microchipping phenomenon and seeks to explain why, despite its many negative connotations in an international context, microchipping is relatively popular in Sweden. The author maps out the movement, examines its key drivers, and delves further to discover why Swedes generally have a high trust in technology, and show little resistance to testing it.  The Swedish case is studied from the three main themes of surveillance, science fiction and transhumanism, and is built around interviews with Swedes who have embraced the technology. The arguments for and against microchipping are contextualised culturally and explained against a background of the long established Swedish relationship with advanced technology, and with their unique level of trust in the government. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students in digital culture related disciplines.

Do-it-yourself (DIY) mycology is a movement that has emerged in the last decade in North America. DIY mycologists specialize in easy and accessible methods of mushroom cultivation and mycological experimentation and mobilize a discourse of alliance with the fungal kingdom. They draw primarily on home cultivation methods innovated by Psilocybe cultivators in the 1970s and on creative applications popularized by commercial mycologist and psychedelic enthusiast Paul Stamets in the 2000s. As a counterpoint to the newfound visibility and legitimacy of lab-synthesized psilocybin in clinical psychiatry, DIY mycology exemplifies an alternate history of this multispecies engagement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, this chapter begins with the tacit premise of the psychedelic/entheogenic movement that the use of psychedelics fosters ecological concern. Many DIY mycologists express biocentric ethics and eco-spiritual principles, but interviews revealed a diverse and nuanced relationship to psychedelics. I argue that DIY mycology is best understood as an interspecies (or cross-kingdom) engagement that is part of an emergent ecological ethics and deep ecology worldview, one that subsumes psychedelic experiences as one manifestation of that engagement. DIY mycology exemplifies how the spread of mycological know-how, fascination, and enthusiasm has fostered an engagement with fungi that extends far beyond psychedelics. To understand this engagement, I contextualize it within wider social and cultural shifts, particularly those that reformulated our practical, ethical, and conceptual relationship with the natural world. This movement attests to the existence of multiple means to enact these ethics and to foster meaningful relationality with nonhuman life in contemporary North American society and culture.

En las últimas décadas el campo de la creación artística ha constituido un espacio privilegiado de reflexión, crítica cultural, cuestionamiento ético, y experimentación tanto estética como técnica en el que se han ensayado las más variadas visiones de la evolución, de la transformación de las relaciones con la naturaleza y de la auto-comprensión del ser humano. Dentro del debate abierto por la biología sintética, este artículo aspira a remarcar que tanto el bioarte como el arte genético, el arte transgénico y el biohacking, constituyen poderosas herramientas de debate social cuyas dimensiones éticas y estéticas deben ser revisadas y tratadas detalladamente.

In the last decades the field of artistic creation has been a privileged space for reflection, cultural criticism, ethical questioning, and both aesthetical and technical experimentation that has been testing the most varied views of evolution; the transformation of relations with nature and the self-understanding of the human being. Within synthetic biology open discussion, this article aims to highlight that both bioart, genetic art, transgenic art and biohacking, are powerful tools for social debate whose ethical and aesthetic dimensions should be reviewed and discussed in detail.

Mit dem Verhältnis von Körper und Technologie in der zeitgenössischen Biohacking-Szene beschäftigt sich der Beitrag von Laura Hille. Die implantierte »Batterie unter der Haut« wird hier zum Symbol der Utopie einer »Auflösung des Menschen in der Technik« – aus Reichweitenangst wird eine Sehnsucht nach der Nähe zur Technik. Gerade weil die Batterie die Grenze zwischen Natur und Technik in Frage stellt, wird sie so zum Einsatzpunkt moderner gouvernementaler Praktiken und biopolitischer Machtausübung.

In opposizione a un uso superficiale del digitale, il design si sta orientando a una maggiore consapevolezza della tecnologia e a una rinnovata esigenza di abbinarla a processi e tecniche afferenti ambiti lontani. Molte delle autoproduzioni contemporanee contengono già in sé il seme di un’ibridazione post-digitale, elaborando dall’interno nuovi materiali organici e tecniche specifiche. La natura di queste produzioni sfugge alle logiche costruttive consuete, poiché, queste, seppur legate a una dimensione digitale, attingono a discipline diverse, come ad esempio la biologia o le neuroscienze. Coerentemente a queste linee di ricerca, all’interno dell’Open Wetlab del Waag Society Institute di Amsterdam, la sperimentazione finale del dottorato ha indagato, attraverso la pratica diretta in laboratorio, nuove modalità del processo manifatturiero, al fine di tracciare un nuovo scenario operativo sulle pratiche future della progettazione contemporanea.

/Abstract L'utilisation des biotechnologies en dehors des laboratoires institutionnels est peu étudiée. Cependant, avec l'essor de certains outils d'édition du génome comme CRISPR/cas9, nous pouvons nous poser la question de la diffusion de ces techniques dans certaines communautés comme celles des biohackers. Nous nous intéresserons à l'émergence du biohacking et interrogerons l'utilisation de ces nouvelles technologies notamment au sein du mouvement transhumaniste. The use of biotechnologies outside institutional laboratories isn't really studied. However, with the development of some genome editing tools like CRISPR/cas9, we can ask ourselves the question of spreading these techniques in some communities such as biohackers. We will describe this movement and especially, an important and controversial current, transhumanism.

El transhumanismo y las aspiraciones de mejora humana a través del uso de distintas tecnologías son cada vez más una realidad en nuestra sociedad. En el siguiente artículo, me propongo explicar algunas de las principales pretensiones de este movimiento y discutir sus implicaciones éticas y morales. La tesis que sostengo es que muchas veces, al tratar de superar la humanidad o conseguir su perfeccionamiento, el hombre se acaba deshumanizando y perdiendo las características que lo hacen ser lo que es, y le dan valor y dignidad.

In this article, we examine the development of biohacker spaces and their impact on innovation systems through the lens of inclusive innovation. Examining issues associated with people, activities, outcomes, and governance, we observe that biohacker spaces offer an alternative approach to biotechnological research outside the orthodox walls of academia, industry, and government. We explain that harnessing the full innovative potential of these spaces depends on flexible legal and regulatory systems, including appropriate biosafety regulations and intellectual property policies and practices, and organic, community-based social and financial networking.

Combining an ethnographic account of the Finnish national pastime of ice swimming and its remediation through the Wim Hof Method with an analysis of media representations, this article expands linguistic and semiotic anthropological scholarship on the enregisterment of bodily and affective qualia by looking at how practitioners of this therapeutic technology elaborate on their corporeal and semiotic selves and the transformations of those selves after indulging in full-body contact with freezing cold water. Laying particular emphasis on stress as a discursive hub and an intensely circulating qualisign within vernacular and institutionalized health discourses, the article discusses how pedagogical ice swimming exegesis is contributing to the enregisterment of emergent forms of personhood through metasemiotic regimentations of the body that draw from natural and holistic as well as scientific and technical registers.

In this essay, we draw on multidisciplinary scholarship and artistic interventions that we consider to be instances of anti-systematic practice, wherein artists' use of their own biological data and matter supports material research, and catalyzes alternative, embodied knowledge production of the self. While an anti-systematic practice builds on systematizing biomedical tools and practices, its primary aim is to integrate that general knowledge with complex, contextualized experiences for deeper collective self-understanding. The datafication of the self through wearable self-tracking technologies expands our capability to build bodily knowledge, but simultaneously entails pervasive (micro)biosurveillance and reproduces an internalized, isolating neoliberal ethos. Technological advances can constitute forms of (micro)biopower that dominate, control, classify, and govern our life on a molecular level. We consider theory and art practice that domesticates and demystifies biotechnology and citatresits or subverts forms of (micro)biopower, while engaging with medical knowledge and biotechnological capability for bodily observation. The works we describe invite participation in collective body projects and empower self-understanding that arises from collaborative conceptualization of alternate futures.

В статье рассматривается разновидность нефармакологических  неинвазивных технологий нейроулучшения, известная в научно-популярном дискурсе под названием нейрохакинга. Речь идет о внеклиническом применении транскраниальной электрической стимуляции (ТЭС) мозга в целях улучшения когнитивных способностей. В частности, описываются современные практики пользования самодельными ТЭС-приборами в домашних условиях. Тенденция к превращению биотехнологий нейростимуляции в продукт повседневного потребления поднимает вопросы о возможных последствиях этого процесса (например, потенциальная аддиктивность электростимуляции мозга). Также предполагается взаимосвязь между распространением практик нейрохакинга и движением Quantified Self. В целом нейрохакинг можно рассматривать как явление, симптоматичное для современности и отражающее укорененность компьютерной метафоры мозга в сознании людей.
Ключевые слова: нейроулучшение, нейрохакинг, транскраниальная стимуляция мозга, самодельные нейростимуляторы, движение Quantified Self

Tendencies and Risks of Neurohacking: from the Perspective of Philosophical Anthropology
The article discusses a variety of non-pharmacological and non-invasive neuroenhancement technologies, known in the popular science discourse as neurohacking. The author focuses on the non-clinical use of transcranial current brain stimulation (tCS) for enhancing cognitive abilities. In particular, today’s practices of home using DIY tDCS-devices are described. The tendency to transform biotechnological neurostimulation into a direct-to-consumer product raises questions about the possible consequences of this phenomenon (e. g., the potential addictiveness of current brain stimulation). The article also traces the relationship between the neurohacking practices and the Quantified Self movement. Generally, neurohacking can be viewed as a phenomenon symptomatic of today’s world and reflects the rootedness of the computer metaphor of the brain in contemporary mentality.
Keywords: neuroenhancement, neurohacking, transcranial brain stimulation, DIY neurostimulators, Quantified Self movement.

RESUMO Em momentos de transformações tecnocientíficas, o humano como espécie, como ideia ou como representação pode ser afetado. Entre as práticas envolvendo tecnologias que crescem atualmente, o biohacking é um termo potencial que engloba diferentes ações, representações e ideias e que guarda certa premissa de atuar sobre o material orgânico [homo-coisa] com o objetivo de 'aprimorar' o ser humano, seja lá por meio de quantas múltiplas e diversas formas isso possa se dar. Este ensaio possui o objetivo de pensar sobre um dos processos de subjetivação de um sujeito pós-humano, partindo de um exemplo retirado do biohacking ocorrido em um evento na cidade de São Paulo. Para tal, pincelamos algumas referências sobre o ciborguismo enquanto um movimento que constrói a metáfora para uma subjetividade híbrida e, na sequência, passamos pelo conceito de pós-humanismo e duas de suas expressões mais proeminentes: o trans-humanismo e o pós-humano crítico. Ao final, argumentamos que, no caso de praticantes e personas hibridizadas pelo biohacking a noção de cuidado de si é um meio analítico de abordar o processo de subjetivação de um sujeito por meio das tecnologias de si. Palavras-chave: subjetividade, ciborguismo, pós-humanismo.


ABSTRACT
In historical moments of technoscientific developments, the human can be affected as a species, as an idea or as a representation of himself. In these days, among the practices involving technologies, the biohacking is a potential term that encompasses different actions and ideas, and it keeps a specific premise of acting on organic material [homo-thing] with the aim of ‘improving’ the human being, whether through how many different forms it may take. This essay has the objective of thinking about the process of subjectivization of a posthuman subject, starting from an example taken from a biohacking event occurred in São Paulo. To do so, we will draw some references about the cyborgism as a movement that enacts the metaphor for a hybrid subjectivity, and after that, we will go through the concept of posthumanism and two of its most interesting expressions: transhumanism and the posthuman critical. In the end, we will argue that in the case of practitioners and people hybridized by the biohacking, the notion of self-care is a logical way of approaching the subjectivization process of a subject through the technologies of the self.
Keywords: Subjectivity, cyborguism, posthumanism.

This paper proposes an understanding of big data and anxiety within Western countries as
intimately coproduced and sustained within a technocratic ideological framework. With the rise of
neoliberalism, which has shaped the political and economic organisation of Western societies, more
‘efficient’ systems and neopositivist ‘science’ called ‘big data’ have been created. The accumulation
of information cannot however be equated with the growth of knowledge, as the data captured
by new technologies is used for private ends: the accumulation of capital and control by a small
elite. As such, new data can be gathered about subjectivities, bodies and performance, and used to
further pressure individuals to fit into preconceived frameworks and identities as a result of the topdown
creation of individualised pseudo-problems which can cause anxiety, especially when they are
not tackled collectively. The paper navigates different approaches to anxiety and big data, critiquing
the technocratic solutions to social problems offered by big data science. Big data will be discussed
as a ‘technological’ creation, an infrastructure which defines, represents, conditions, manages, and
sustains human subjectivity, corporeal affects, and the organisation of society. The ambivalence of
big data will be illustrated, as it is used both as a solution and tool for producing, but also coping
with anxiety. All strategies are deeply political, underlined by a feeling of anxiety which ought to be
articulated politically, to encourage a cooperative search for new ways of overcoming technological
control and fostering care and collective action. Sociology must remain critical in its engagement
with big data in order to reveal practices of depoliticisation, quantification, standardisation,
monitorisation and sanctioning, and the reduction of social reality and experience to algorithms.