I’m very interested in this concept, which I was introduced to through the work of Pierpaolo Donati and Andrea Maccarini earlier this year. It emerged from the work of Arnold Gehlen and refers to the role of human institutions in unburdening us from existential demands. This is quoted from his Human Beings […]
I came across an interesting extract in The New Ruthless Economy, by Simon Head, which shone an interesting light on the relationship between self-tracking and social tracking. From loc 1318: Paula Dabbart, an employee ployee at an American Airlines reservations center in Tucson, said that she wore a stopwatch on a string around […]
A couple of years ago I purchased a Nike Fuel Band, partly out of a curiosity driven by my nascent interest in self-tracking and partly out of a desire to rationalise not going to the gym. If I was planning to conduct research on self-tracking practices then it seemed important […]
I came across a reference to this earlier today and was struck by how ahead of its time it was. It’s so much more resonant in a world of activity trackers, life hacking and executive mindfulness than it was originally.
Background to the video here. I have to admit that I’d assumed this sort of thing was at least a decade away. What’s so creepy about this (beyond “because of this your feeling of safety increased”) is how ‘joined up’ the proposed monitoring is. Rather than piecemeal monitoring that gradually gets joined up […]
This looks interesting: https://opencall.sciencegallery.com/open-call/lifelogging-lab Lifelogging Lab CLOSING DATE: Thursday, October 23, 2014 – 12:00 LIFELOGGING LAB If you could measure everything…would you? Calling all trackers, quantifiers, analysers and creative counters Science Gallery is seeking proposals for its upcoming exhibition LIFELOGGING LAB, which will open in February 2015. Exhibition and laboratory […]
Wellcome Trust Symposium on New Conceptual Approaches to Personal Medical Devices 18th-19th September 2014 Post-doctoral Suite, 16 Mill Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Fuelled by the accelerating pace of technological development and a general shift to personalised, patient-led medicine alongside the growing Quantified Self and Big Data movements, the emerging […]
What’s it like to be a junior analyst on Wall Street making $70,000 a year in your early 20s? What sort of people are drawn towards this career path? Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits attempts to answer these questions by tracking a handful of millennial recruits to […]
Deborah Lupton has posted a very useful item on her blog, attached to a forthcoming paper, suggesting five modes of self-tracking: Private self-tracking Pushed self-tracking Communal self-tracking Imposed self-tracking Exploited self-tracking You can read the full post here. The only one I’m not convinced of is ‘exploited self-tracking’. I otherwise really […]
This is wonderful – running drawing. (HT Kirsty Lohman) Another long run completed. Photograph: Running Drawing/Claire Wyckoff
Earlier this week I finally bought the Jawbone Up24 after weeks of deliberation. I’d got bored with the Nike Fuel Band, losing interest in the opaque ‘fuel points’ measurement and increasingly finding it to be an unwelcome presence on my wrist. I’d also been ever more aware of how weird my […]
I recently blogged about the idea of the ‘qualified self’ and why I’m drawn to this phrase. As sometimes happens, I wasn’t being enormously serious when I started writing the post but had argued myself into a new position by the end of it. I like the ‘qualified self’ because […]
The idea of “qualitative self-tracking” is one that I’ve mentioned on my blog before. It’s a term in which I think but it’s also one that I’m aware of being unclear about exactly what I mean by it. Searching google shows a complete absence of material relating to it – […]
This post on Org Theory, which makes reference to a superb New Yorker article about the Fitbit, nicely captures an ambivalence about self-tracking which I share: In fact, there is a whole Quantified Self movement, complete with conferences and meet-up groups. One obvious take on this is that we’re all becoming perfect neoliberal subjects, rational, entrepreneurial and self-disciplined. […]
CALL FOR PAPERS Theorising Personal Medical Devices: New Perspectives 18th-19th September 2014 Post-doctoral Suite, 16 Mill Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Fuelled by the accelerating pace of technological development and a general shift to personalised, patient-led medicine alongside the growing Quantified Self and Big Data movements, the emerging field of personal […]
The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to contribute then please send a short abstract and bio to […]
Tuesday, September 17, 2013 from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM (BST) Leeds, United Kingdom At this inaugural event there will be presentations from researchers who have been exploring quantified self or self-tracking either empirically or theoretically which will stimulate discussion around the potential and implications for future developments. We hope […]
This post is a very tentative first step towards something which I hope others would share my enthusiasm for. I first encountered Quantified Self via Caspar Addyman who I worked with on Your Brain on Drugs. I had to drop out of the project before we finished the Boozerlyzer but it was […]
