‘I am he. I am he. Siri rules’: Work and play with the Apple Watch

Abstract

In this article, we will use autoethnographic accounts of our use of the Apple Watch to analyse a new type of ludic labour that has emerged in recent years, in which leisure activities are redefined in terms of work and quantifiable data. Wearable devices like the Apple Watch encourage us to share data about ourselves and our activities, dividing our attention in everyday contexts as 'quasi-objects' that need our input to hybridise work and play, offering opportunities to merge leisure and labour, and also the possibility for resistant practices in the interstices between function and failure. We combine perspectives from Science and Technology studies, media studies and play studies, including the 'quantified self' and the 'Internet of Things', to argue that while the Apple Watch moves us closer to merging with the machine, its inability to provide what it promises offers a way out-a more positive understanding of intimate, wearable computing technology.

Creating ‘automatic subjects’: Corporate wellness and self-tracking

“…The watch can also be taken as illustrative of broader design trends as there is well-established cross-pollination between platforms (Simon, 2015) such as the appropriation of Apple’s ‘ring’ system for representing daily progress (discussed below) by the Google Fit app. Limited recent work has established the device as a legitimate object of analysis by showing how it counter-intuitively reasserts traditional medical hierarchies and blurs the boundary between work and play (O’Neill, 2017; Wilmott et al, 2018). Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that ST and CWST are still only available to (and perhaps desired by) relatively few and caution must be taken not to present them as prophets of sweeping societal change or assume that they signify macro-level trends (Woolgar, 2002: 6).…”

Against Game Studies

“…Geography scholars have been similarly using games to build new theories on post-phenomenological relations with space (Ash, 2012) to re-examine domesticity (Pink, Hjorth, Horst, Nettheim, & Bell, 2018), or to make sense of ruins and landscapes (Fraser, 2016). Games are used in media studies to reflect on wearable technology (Wilmott, Fraser, & Lammes, 2018), platforms (Nieborg & Poell, 2018;Plantin et al, 2018) or market commodities (Hamari, 2011;Nieborg, 2015). I wish to emphasise again and again that nothing makes the above titles "better" than other game research.…”

Dancing with Data: Introducing a Creative Interactional Metaphor

“…Building on the intimate experiences of an autoethnographic approach, Wilmott et al (2017) reveal the relationship with the Apple Watch as a form of embodied and reflexive interaction that leads to forms of performance and play or what they term ‘ludic labour’ (p. 78). Utilising Serres’ notion of the ‘quasi-object’, the Apple Watch is realised in interaction: ‘it only becomes something when we wrap it around our wrists’ (p. 87).…”

“…It is construed only when attached to the moving body, part of ‘an assemblage in which data and bodies constantly and intimately produce each other’ (p. 87). At the same time, the Watch implicates productive forms of embodiment and ‘intercorporealisation’ (Richardson (2012) as cited in Wilmott et al 2017) wherein ‘technologies mediate and shape our understanding of space through the centrality of embodiment’ (p. 88). Not only this, ‘the Watch also shapes the way we locate within ourselves: from eye to finger, from heart to skin, from ears to arms’ (p. 89).…”