perfect match: biometrics and body patterning in a networked world

Bodies are increasingly becoming collectively integrated into informational processes which are open to biotechnical forms of regulation. Biometrics, the use of body measurements such as retina scanning, face recognition and fingerprinting is now being uncontroversially introduced throughout the world under the aegis of security and efficient traffic management. Fields that once molded the individual through bodily confinement and observation are dispersing and converging into the regimes of logistics and control. This paper looks at the operations of biometrics to consider the biopolitical ramifications of body measurement as power is made operational by controlling movement via the haptic techniques of information architecture rather than the more familiar modes of discipline and panoptical vision machines. Biometrics is the perfect control for the networked individual as we divide across infinite planes and dimensions, reconfiguring endlessly to become pattern matches in expanding databases of everyday life.