This paper examines the relationship between interactive life insurance companies and their policyholders and the way in which wearable fitness devices are deployed by these companies as data-generating surveillance technologies instead of personal health and fitness devices. Working within an expanded framework of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2015), I argue that while the notion of self-care generally associated with wearable fitness devices is underpinned by neoliberal constructs, the incentivization of interactive life insurance programs works to obscure the immense value placed on information capital. This paper briefly considers the legal loopholes involved in the harvesting of sensitive health and fitness information from consumer wearables and suggests that the push toward fitness trackers has little to do with any real concerns for the health and fitness of consumers and policyholders. Lastly, I consider different forms of unwaged labour in the relationship between policyholders and interactive life insurance programs. I contend that policyholders do not recognise the free and immaterial labour that goes into sustaining the data-based business model that interactive life insurance companies and social media platforms use and rely on for profit. In so doing, they relinquish power and control over the data they work to produce, only so that the information can be commodified and used against them.

中文翻译：

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监视资本主义，数据分散化和无偿劳动：可穿戴健身设备和交互式人寿保险的兴起

本文研究了互动式人寿保险公司与其保单持有人之间的关系，以及这些公司将可穿戴健身设备部署为数据生成监视技术而非个人健康和健身设备的方式。我在扩展的“监视资本主义”框架内工作（Zuboff，2015年），我认为，虽然与可穿戴健身设备通常相关的自我保健概念是由新自由主义构建的，但对互动式人寿保险计划的激励却掩盖了其巨大的价值。放在信息资本上。本文简要地考虑了从消费者可穿戴设备中收集敏感的健康和健身信息所涉及的法律漏洞，并建议推动健身追踪器与消费者和保单持有人的健康和健身没有任何实际关系。最后，在保单持有人与互动式人寿保险计划之间的关系中，我考虑了不同形式的无薪劳动。我认为，保单持有人没有意识到为维持交互式人寿保险公司和社交媒体平台使用并依靠其牟利的基于数据的业务模型所付出的自由和非物质劳动。这样一来，他们就放弃了对所产生的数据的权力和控制权，仅使信息可以被修改和使用。