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In the last few years, tracking systems that harvest web data to identify trends, calculate predictions, and warn about potential epidemic outbreaks have proliferated. These systems integrate crowdsourced data and digital traces, collecting information from a variety of online sources, and they promise to change the way governments, institutions, and individuals understand and respond to health concerns. This article examines some of the conceptual and practical challenges raised by the online algorithmic tracking of disease by focusing on the case of Google Flu Trends (GFT). Launched in 2008, GFT was Google's flagship syndromic surveillance system, specializing in 'real-time' tracking of outbreaks of influenza. GFT mined massive amounts of data about online search behavior to extract patterns and anticipate the future of viral activity. But it did a poor job, and Google shut the system down in 2015. This paper focuses on GFT's shortcomings, which were particularly severe during flu epidemics, when GFT struggled to make sense of the unexpected surges in the number of search queries. I suggest two reasons for GFT's difficulties. First, it failed to keep track of the dynamics of contagion, at once biological and digital, as it affected what I call here the 'googling crowds'. Search behavior during epidemics in part stems from a sort of viral anxiety not easily amenable to algorithmic anticipation, to the extent that the algorithm's predictive capacity remains dependent on past data and patterns. Second, I suggest that GFT's troubles were the result of how it collected data and performed what I call 'epidemic reality'. GFT's data became severed from the processes Google aimed to track, and the data took on a life of their own: a trackable life, in which there was little flu left. The story of GFT, I suggest, offers insight into contemporary tensions between the indomitable intensity of collective life and stubborn attempts at its algorithmic formalization.

Cet article prend pour objet les relations entre technologie et humanité dans l'œuvre du philosophe Peter Sloterdijk. Pour ce faire, une place de choix est accordée au renversement qu'opère Sloterdijk à propos de la question de l'humanisme dans l'œuvre de Martin Heidegger. L'article se concentre sur des points de divergences qui sont à même de souligner l'originalité de la pensée de Sloterdijk ainsi que sa contribution à de plus larges discussions relatives aux transmutations opérées par la technologie. Une attention particulière sera accordée au concept d'« anthropotechnique(s) », compris comme une série de processus, de techniques par lesquels les humains tissent l'espace de leur existence.

Using the case of the Pan-African e-Network, this Think Piece describes some of the practical and theoretical challenges presented by eHealth. At the junction of 'networked thinking' and clinical work, human lives come to matter in new ways, taking shape as objects of knowledge and intervention. The terrain on which this is happening is discursive, and deeply enmeshed with living and technical systems. Studying eHealth reveals how contemporary arrangements create new spaces in which lives are cared for. As such, it is inseparable from wider questions being raised by global eHealth practices: How are spaces of care to be designed in the era of global connectivity? What are the emergent relations between space, information technology, and the government of care on a global scale?

Cet article fait suite à une recherche de terrain menée auprès de migrants indiens de Montréal et dont l'objectif était de cerner le sens associé à la détresse chez ceux-ci et de constater les différentes stratégies thérapeutiques utilisées en sa présence ou pour la prévenir. L'article se concentre principalement sur la prise en charge de la détresse, laquelle a pour trame de fond une certaine image de l'individu, de ses états d'esprit et de leur temporalité. Les migrants indiens percevant la détresse comme une rupture de l'équilibre intérieur, leurs actions thérapeutiques visent principalement le renforcement de l'intérieur en s'appuyant sur différentes pratiques telles que le yoga, la prière, l'alimentation et l'exercice. Le recours aux médicaments, quant à lui, se situe dans une relation d'extériorité sémantique avec la conception de l'individualité et de la détresse avancée par les répondants.