Your body isn't a temple, it's a data factory emitting digital exhaust

The digital economy has often been called a new industrial revolution. And while factories dominated the first industrial revolution, today's factory is the human body. Instead of looking at people as "consumers" companies are beginning to think of them as "producers" emitting a steady stream of digital exhaust; indeed, the report's authors propose that the data tax would work like a pollution tax. Some brands have even used the idea of the body as a factory – or in Nike's case a "sweatshop"– in their marketing activity. In a campaign called Bid Your Sweat, the sports brand created an online auction in which the only currency accepted was the distances you'd run. Every kilometre logged on the Nike+ system was converted into currency you could buy Nike swag with.

The body as an "input/output device" is just one example of how digital technology is creating a new sort of biological discourse. We have begun to talk about ourselves in numerical, technological terms: the quantified self, life-tracking, life-hacking, etc. It's a vocabulary even embraced by new-age types who you think would be more interested in their chakras than their computers. Deepak Chopra, for example, promoted his involvement at CES with a tweet stating: "Our biology is a nano-technology workshop in our awareness." Yeah, I don't know what that means either, except that it's probably a nano-syntactic example of absolute bollocks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/body-data-factory-digital-exhaust-data-tax