Google and the New Eugenics

Google recently unveiled details of its new project Baseline, intended to contr. . . —excuse me, map all aspects of human biological activity. (Who could object to mapping?) The goal is to find biomarkers indicating susceptibility to disease at a much earlier stage.

“Never mind us. We're just here mappin' your biomarkers. #don'tbeevil”

Naturally the main privacy concern being articulated is whether Google will know too much—or whether our future employers or spouses will pull our biomarkers, not just our credit reports. The objections to such a project pale, Google will assure us, in comparison to the benefits that will come from increased risk assessment and practical ability to control our future health.

But what about the project itself?

"The information," according to the Wall Street Journal, "will include participants' entire genomes, their parents' genetic history as well as information on how they metabolize food, nutrients and drugs, how fast their hearts beat under stress and how chemical reactions change the behavior of their genes."

Some MDs have been panning Google's new "moonshot". Baseline will begin with fewer than an hundred volunteers—hardly a large sample. Baseline's director is more commonly known as the owner of a ridiculous health spa in California, where wealthy patients can track their health in myriad exorbitant ways.
Criticism of Google is fun to watch, but when the substance of the objection is (1) "not enough people" and (2) "insufficiently clear goals" then perhaps we should abide by the adage: stick with the psychotic tech company you've got. Watch what you wish for, O scientists!

The direction this will go is evident in sports:

With some help from Zebra Technologies' location system, 17 NFL stadiums will use receivers and RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags inside player's shoulder pads to track movement. The setup provides real-time position data for each player, offering up precise info on acceleration, speed, routes and distance as part of the "Next Gen Stats" initiative for fans. . . . "Zebra's tracking technology will help teams to evolve training, scouting and evaluation through increased knowledge of player performance, as well as provide ways for our teams and partners to enhance the fan experience," says NFL VP of Media Strategy Vishal Shah.

Talk about having a chip on your shoulder . . .

So why not combine the two projects? Recruit NFL teams for Google Baseline. Chip 'em and chip 'em good—Googlestyle, with a little glucose monitoring here, some DNA sequencing there, and round-the-clock monitoring of every move you make.

(C) GoogleNFL 2014

Knowledge of what our players do on the field isn't enough. We need to know what they're eating and what they're thinking all the time. Aren't they, after all, the Platonic guardians of the empty soul of our society? They shouldn't really have privacy, should they?

The tendency thus points in two directions:

1. a protoeugenic desire to manage all aspects of human biological expression relative to the pursuit of some goal; &
2. an application of early contemporary tracking technologies to those in public life, with the details to be available to every viewer at any time.

There's only one tendency missing from the above list: the tendency of statistical knowledge to make the enjoyment of ordinary life impossible.

Google, to recall where we began, has stated that their inquiry is simply pathological, to study the origins of disease. Yes, yes, . . . it's pathological indeed.