Who Watches the Apple Watchers?

Build your own personalized panopticon — and maybe save your life

“The future of health is on your wrist,” Apple tweeted in December alongside a 15-second ad for its Apple Watch Series 7, which features LTE connectivity. In the clip (longer versions of which were released on January 1st), the artificially intelligent voice of Siri states, “The owner of this Apple Watch has taken a hard fall,” before reciting the longitude and latitude. The story, one of a few Apple is using to market the safety feature of its new watches and updated operating system, was that a man, Bob B., was knocked unconscious while biking. His watch called 911.

This is not why I bought an Apple Watch recently, but it didn’t make me regret it, either. Such is the lure of what Chris Gillard calls luxury surveillance, the myriad tracking services marketed to the wealthy that are otherwise imposed on others. Although I don’t believe in the “nothing to hide” idea, I’m still one of those assholes with this thing on my wrist, having paid for what amounts to a fancy tracking bracelet.

Yet, I’m — somewhat shamefully — comforted by the idea that, if it came to it, my watch might save my life. For while the promise of Apple’s ads is, on the surface, one of security, a little deeper down the message of tracking technology like this is a bit different, a bit more twisted. Paradoxically, what Apple is actually marketing with its surveillance tech isn’t just security, but rather freedom, albeit a warped one: With a watch monitoring you at all times, you can now do whatever you want!

I’ll confess here that it’s this, in part, that drove me to buy an Apple Watch. Not the “freedom” to go mountain biking knowing that if I fall the watch will call 911, but freedom of another kind — freedom from another piece of technology: my phone. The rationale, if you can call it that, was to limit the lure of my iPhone. With the watch, I can still know I have an email from work, but I’m unable to fully engage in the same way I would if I had my phone. As for social media, it’s just not accessible. So, a fancy bit of surveillance tech to distance myself from my other surveillance tech. Freedom, I guess. And it works, sort of. Since having the watch, I’ve looked at my phone less, checked my social feeds less, and…