ABSTRACT
In this chapter we tack back and forth between critically thinking about the activities involved in and the technologies of caring, and reflecting on what it means to care for others-an act that is as ubiquitous as it is primal. Some kinds of care, undertaken at home, are short term in response to an acute and relatively minor infection. Longer-term care involves far broader tasks, as in caring for older people and for people of all ages with chronic health problems or communication and cognitive difficulties. We juxtapose the mechanical realm of increasingly high-tech medicine with human interactions that we carry out to physically and emotionally support one another. Our intent is to position ‘technologies of care’ as tools, implements, and prosthetic extensions of our desire to intervene with fate, to show love and compassion, to alleviate suffering, and to make our lived experiences of life and death better. We move from a discussion of the act of caring for others in the most basic, physically present kinds of settings, to a consideration of new ways of delivering care via systems of communication and monitoring of patients from a distance. We then discuss some of the complexities of implementing new systems of telemedicine, for instance, in very remote, culturally distinct regions of the globe. Finally, we turn to the very well-informed patients who interact with one another via the Internet and who are creating new forms of socialities based on their conditions and innovative understandings of their illnesses, possible treatments, and ways of getting the support that they need.
