The obliteration of life: depersonalization and disembodiment in the terabyte era

Post-genomics allegedly allow us to become the “managers” of our own health. And yet, human individuality seems to dissolve into massive data streams. What is the fate of the human subject in the terabyte age? The Human Genome Project already resulted in personalizing and depersonalizing trends, exemplified by two types of genomes: the anonymized Human Reference Genome versus the personal genomes of genomics celebrities. This ambiguity is radicalized by post-genomics. Life becomes “obliterated”: dissolved into letters and symbols (e.g. the nucleotide alphabet), but this is complemented by re-personalizing trends. As a case study, I will analyze the Snyderome, involving a prominent geneticist who closely monitored “everything” with the help of precision diagnostics, resulting in a comprehensive (“high coverage”) omics portrait, highly personal and highly impersonal at the same time, captured in massive data sets, setting the stage for a digital panopticon: a molecularized “conscience”, the superego of the terabyte age.