Captivating Technology: How surveillance technology is taking over our prisons and our bodies

We are back with a brand-new season of the Technically Human podcast! This week's episode features Dr. Anthony Hatch. We discuss the use of psychotropic drugs in prisons as a form of carceral technology, race, and the bioethics of food systems. Learn more about how technologies are mediating health data, how our understanding of our bodies changes in response to new monitoring and mediating technologies, and how Dr. Hatch is creating a space for the next generation of technologists, humanists, and social scientists to develop more equitable, ethical relationships to building tech products.

Anthony Ryan Hatch, Ph.D., is a sociologist and Associate Professor and Chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University where he is also affiliated faculty in the Department of African American Studies, the College of the Environment, and the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America (Minnesota, 2019) and Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America (Minnesota, 2016). He recently appeared in the PBS documentary Blood Sugar Rising and lectures widely on health systems, medical technology, and social inequalities. 

In Spring 2021, he started Black Box Labs, an undergraduate research and training laboratory that offers students training in qualitative research methods aligned with science and technology studies and the opportunity to collaborate with faculty on social research. 

This episode was produced by Matt Perry

Art by Desi Aleman