Cyberpunk, the Postglobal and the Posthuman

One specific boundary that has shifted significantly in the past five years is the collapse between health data privacy and social identity surveillance, particularly in how biometric and algorithmic health systems categorize bodies in ways that disproportionately affect Black women. In recent years, technology has increasingly transformed people’s bodies and personal health information into data that systems use to make life-changing decisions. This shift especially impacts Black women because these technologies are often biased and misread or misinterpret their bodies, reinforcing the idea that the boundary between private identity and public control is no longer firmly maintained.

Algorithmic Bias in Healthcare

Over the past five years, algorithms used to predict health risks, such as hospital admission likelihood or treatment prioritization, have demonstrated clear racial bias. For example, a clinical algorithm widely used by hospitals to determine which patients required additional care was found to favor white patients over Black patients. Black patients had to be significantly sicker than white patients in order to receive the same level of care recommendations. This occurred because the algorithm was trained on historical healthcare spending data, which showed long-standing inequalities in access to care and financial investment in Black patients (Grant, 2025). Additionally, many sensors in point-of-care testing devices and wearable technologies perform less accurately on darker skin tones, which can negatively affect diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment outcomes.

This shift is largely driven by technological and economic forces. Artificial intelligence and machine learning systems are often trained on datasets that do not adequately represent minority populations, allowing these gaps and biases to persist. As biometric and health technologies move into everyday use, the consequences of these inaccuracies become more widespread and impactful. Companies are frequently pressured to deploy products quickly for competitive and financial gain, often without conducting inclusive testing. This economic incentive accelerates the erosion of the boundary between private health information and public, system-driven classification.

Power, Profit, and Control

Cyberpunk literature frequently explores the collapse of boundaries through dystopian systems that reduce individuals to data profiles and identity categories. Similarly, modern health and biometric technologies increasingly invade personal privacy and autonomy by translating people into datasets that determine how they are treated within medical, social, and institutional systems. Black women, who often experience overlapping racial, gender, and technological biases, face a compounded burden. Their bodies and identities are more likely to be misclassified in ways that affect not only health outcomes, but also interactions with broader systems such as employment and public surveillance. This reinforces a cycle in which the boundary between the self and external systems of control continues to dissolve.

The primary beneficiaries of this shift are technology companies and healthcare payers, who profit financially and reduce costs by relying on automated systems rather than human labor and individualized care. Those most impacted are communities with less power to challenge or question data-driven decisions. Entities that design and control these algorithms occupy a particularly powerful position, as they define what counts as “normal” data and shape who profits from these systems. This raises critical ethical and political questions, including what rights individuals should have over their personal health and identity data, and how society can ensure that technology does not replicate or reinforce historical patterns of oppression.

In conclusion, the collapse of the boundary between health data privacy and identity surveillance reflects key cyberpunk themes, especially when viewed through the lived experiences of Black women. This shift highlights the urgent need for accountability, equitable technological design, and policy interventions that rebalance these boundaries and ensure that technological progress serves all communities fairly.

Citations

Grant, C. (2025, September 24). Algorithms are making decisions about health care, which may only worsen medical racism: ACLU. American Civil Liberties Union.
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/algorithms-in-health-care-may-worsen-medical-racism

Sharfstein, Joshua. “How Health Care Algorithms and AI Can Help and Harm | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health.” Publichealth.jhu.edu, 2 May 2023, publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/how-health-care-algorithms-and-ai-can-help-and-harm.

Targeted News Service. (2024, October 17). Association of Health Care Journalists: Biased Devices – Reporting on Racial Bias in Health Algorithms and Products. Targeted News Service. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn%3acontentItem%3a6D6R-94 T1-DYG2-R3S2-00000-00&context=1519360&identityprofileid=NZ9N7751352

In a cyberpunk world, identity isn’t just who we are—it’s what corporations and governments can verify, commodify, and control. Today, the boundary between physical identity and digital identity is eroding. What once was a legal document in a wallet is now a constellation of biometric scans, mobile IDs, and digital wallets that follow us everywhere we go. This isn’t tomorrow’s speculation—it’s happening now.

The Boundary That Has Shifted

Historically, identity was rooted in the physical: passports, birth certificates, social security cards. In the digital age, identity became credentials we entered online—usernames, passwords, PINs. But in 2025 digital identity systems are increasingly biometric, mobile, and machine-readable, blurring the line between who you are and what a machine recognizes you as.

Governments and corporations are building systems that link your face, fingerprint, voice, or palm directly to essential services like travel, banking, healthcare, and even public benefits. The European Union’s eIDAS 2.0 initiative is creating a digital identity wallet usable across all member states, promising convenience but also redefining what it means to prove who you are in a digital society.

Meanwhile, biometric techniques—once exotic—now fuel everyday authentication. From palm biometrics in stores and hospitals to mobile IDs on a phone, the move toward identity tied to our bodies rather than passwords is accelerating.

What’s Driving the Shift

Technological forces: Biometric systems and mobile identity standards have improved dramatically. Industry reports show passwordless authentication increasingly replacing traditional login methods, with biometrics offering convenience and security advantages—at least superficially.

Economic incentives: Tech companies and governments alike see huge value in digital identity platforms. They reduce fraud, streamline services, and open doors to new monetizable data streams. No database is just for ID anymore—it’s also a goldmine for behavior, spending patterns, and social metrics.

Political and social pressures: The push for digital identity isn’t just consumer convenience. Governments argue it enhances security, prevents fraud, and enables digital citizenship in an era of global mobility. But critics warn that once biometric identity systems become ubiquitous, opting out becomes increasingly difficult.

How This Connects to Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk fiction vividly illustrates worlds where identity is mutable, encoded, and monitored by systems beyond individual control. In Neuromancer or Snow Crash, identity chips, corporate databases, and neural codes make every person traceable and manipulable. Today’s digital identity systems reflect that logic: your face, your palm, your biometric signature becomes a node in a global network, shaped by technical architectures and power structures.

Cyberpunk theory teaches us to see how technologies don’t merely serve users but also reshape social relations. The transition to biometric, mobile IDs recasts identity itself as something processable, shareable, and surveilled—no longer purely personal, but infrastructural.

Who Benefits—and Who’s at Risk?

Potential benefits:

1. Faster border crossings and secure travel documentation.
2. Passwordless security that reduces traditional cyber-attacks.
3. Access to services for people without traditional documentation.

Risks and harms:

4. Surveillance and privacy erosion: Biometric systems can track movements across spaces, linking online and offline behaviors in ways never before possible.

5. Exclusion and inequality: Individuals without compatible devices or digital literacy risk being shut out of essential systems.

6. Permanent identifiers: Unlike passwords, biometric traits cannot be changed. If compromised, your faceprint or fingerprint is compromised for life.

These concerns echo fundamental cyberpunk anxieties about surveillance, agency, and control. When identity becomes a data point indexed and algorithmically processed, the human subject transforms into a profile—a mathematical object to be scored, categorized, and predicted.

Ethical Questions We Must Ask

Consent or coercion? When a digital ID is required for basic services, can consent truly be voluntary?

Who controls your identity? Is it a corporate cloud, a nation-state database, or the individual themselves?

What happens when borders are digital rather than physical? There’s a powerful allure to seamless global identity—but also a danger of borderless surveillance.

Understanding the collapse between physical and digital identity is urgent because it affects every person with a smartphone, a passport, or an online presence. The question isn’t whether identity is changing—but whether we will shape that change or be shaped by it.

APA-Style References

European Commission. (2025). eIDAS 2.0 digital identity wallet framework. TRUSTECH. https://www.trustech-event.com/en/event/news/digital-identity-trends-2025

Akhison, G. (2025). Towards a universal digital identity: A blockchain-based framework for borderless verification. Frontiers in Blockchain. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1688287/full

Demystify Biometrics. (2025). Biometrics & digital identity: Top 5 trends. https://www.demystifybiometrics.com/post/march-2025-biometrics-digital-identity-top-5-trends

Digital identity in 2025: biometric wallets and privacy dilemmas. (2025). RTechnology. https://rtechnology.in/articles/1050/digital-identity-in-2025-biometric-wallets-and-privacy-dilemmas

Le Monde. (2025, September 1). The discreet rise of facial recognition around the world. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/09/01/the-discreet-rise-of-facial-recognition-around-the-world_6744911_13.html

Strathmore University CIPIT. (2024). Global biometric and digital identity trend analysis (Global Report). https://cipit.strathmore.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Global-BDI-Trend-Analysis-Geographical-Assessment-Final-Approval-06.09.2023-compressed.

OpenAI. (2026). Digital identity and biometrics in everyday life [AI-generated image]. https://www.openai.com/dall-e