In the midst of ads for 13,000-dollar handbags and Sotheby's auctions, today's New York Times featured this advertisement for Tip Top Shoes. Its headline is: "Free Digital Foot Scan!" Gosh, I was dying for one of those. It, then, goes on to tell us to stop by and receive a free digital scan and analysis (!) of our feet for free, "for the entire family!". Nevermind that Tip Top Shoes is a shoe store, not a a podiatrist office and that for hundreds of years we have chosen shoes according to memorized shoe-size and in situ trials and have been doing just fine.
Here is an example of how the word "digital" functions as commodity consumption bait and becomes a wild card of sorts, thrown around as code for "inherently good, new, innovative", clearly better than whatever it was that we had before (analogue foot scans?). What word could really compete with "digital" after all? Is there any concept that transcends its inherently perceived goodness? An apex of goodness so epitomizing it renders centuries of then-effective habits moot and flat.
The ad works around the implicitness of constructed givens, the exclamation marks signaling a supposed obviousness to the benefits of a digital foot scan. It's free too, we gotta get in on that. The headline screams with its "!" rendering the necessity of its claims illusive-yet-automatically-positive via the word "digital." And, if it is "for the entire family!" (heterosexual bait- check!), then it must be really great.
I suppose, however, that if we could scan our feet at home the online shoe store could match our individual size to the perfect shoe and avoid returning them to the store if they don't fit (there's always an in-between-ness that isn't accounted for in any system of classification, after all, whether it is < male > and < female >, < terror> and < democracy > or 10 and 10 1/2). But could we envision a Google/Facebook-esque system of foot scans every shoe store customer goes through when trying on shoes? Their foot scan data would, then, go to a database and inform the kinds of advertisements and samples she would receive? What other limbs would then lend themselves to this newly necessary scanning? Could we have all our body parts mapped out online and not ever have to plug in our sizes anymore when ordering clothing and condoms?
Interesting. And I'd like to expand the reflections here to the fact that I - as an alien, i.e. non-American - am obliged to let all of my ten fingertips be scanned at the airport and a 'portrait' shot of me too... not sure about recording my voice.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in Europe health information and patient summaries will be available digitally soon (if not already) through the individual's insurance card.