Big Data and biopolitics are two major issues currently attracting attention in public health discourse, but also in sociology of knowledge, STS Studies as well as in philosophy of science and bioethics. The paper considers big data to be a new form and instrument of biopolitics (Foucault) which addresses both the categories of body and space. It is expected to fundamentally transform health care systems, domestic environments and practices of self-observation and reflection. Accordingly the paper points out some problems and pitfalls as well as open questions that have emerged in the field of AAL, which merit more attention in future public and academic debate.
The book series International Library of Ethics, Law and the New Medicine comprises volumes with an international and interdisciplinary focus. The aim of the Series is to publish books on foundational issues in (bio) ethics, law, international health care and medicine. The 28 volumes that have already appeared in this series address aspects of aging, mental health, AIDS, preventive medicine, bioethics and many other current topics.This Series was conceived against the background of increasing globalization and interdependency of the world's cultures and governments, with mutual influencing occurring throughout the world in all fields, most surely in health care and its delivery. By means of this Series we aim to contribute and cooperate to meet the challenge of our time: how to aim human technology to good human ends, how to deal with changed values in the areas of religion, society, culture and the self-definition of human persons, and how to formulate a new way of thinking, a new ethic.We welcome book proposals representing the broad interest of the interdisciplinary and international focus of the series. We especially welcome proposals that address aspects of 'new medicine', meaning advances in research and clinical health care, with an emphasis on those interventions and alterations that force us to reexamine foundational issues.More information about this series at
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