Quantified Self in the Washington Post
In the discussion following my previous post about FlowingData's self-surveillance contest, JAHKNOW kindly points us to a Washington Post article from yesterday about the quantified self, BB pal Gary Wolf's notion that you can examine your own body through a data-driven scientific lens. The article mentions sites to help you track sex acts, menstruation, exercise, and a variety of other activities and functions. From the Washington Post:
Previously on BB:
• FlowingData's personal viz contest winner
• Seth Roberts' fascinating self-experiments
Members (of the Bay Area "quantified self show and tell" group) plan to meet monthly to share with one another the tools and sites they've found helpful on their individual paths to self-digitization. Topics include, according to the group invite: behavior monitoring, location tracking, digitizing body info and non-invasive probes."Bytes of Life" (WashingtonPost.com)
"Don't you think it's kind of obvious that if you step on a scale, there should be something that sends the information to your computer?" asks Gary Wolf, a contributing editor at Wired magazine and one of Quantified Self's co-founders. "Isn't it ridiculous to think that blood pressure shouldn't be measured at least once a day, if not several times a day?"
Wolf is a tracker whose particular interest is the secret workings of his own body.
You listen to his questions -- posed energetically and frequently interrupted by excited laughter -- and you think No, Gary, no!
Most of us would prefer our scale's number never saw light of day, much less light of database.
At some level, Wolf knows this. He theorizes that the impulse to self-track is one part available technology, one part geeky, data-driven personality. So far, only 10 people have RSVP'd affirmatively to Quantified Self's first meeting, which is scheduled to take place mid-September. "This is," Wolf says, "probably a very small subset of humanity."
Previously on BB:
• FlowingData's personal viz contest winner
• Seth Roberts' fascinating self-experiments
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There's also Fitbit, which just showed at TC50.
"Isn't it ridiculous to think that blood pressure shouldn't be measured at least once a day, if not several times a day?"
In general this would be something ridiculous for anyone who has anxiety issues or hypochondriac issues to do. Biofeedback is not recommended for certain kinds of people with panic disorder because they can panic at the moment their biofeedback goes awry.
@2: ... which of course makes their readings look even scarier, etc. I see your point.
Personally, I'd love to have good statistics for all of this. It might or might not be related to my love for stats-tracking and -tweaking in RPGish games.
This kind of behavior reminds me of Mr. Doctorow's story "Things that make me weak and strange get engineered away", in which members of a religious order have biofeedback monitors implanted (?) and examine all the minutia of there inner life. Interesting stuff but i think that monitoring all possible inputs and outputs would hinder my ability to actually live a life. That's just me though...
::looks it up in the dictionary::
dig-i-tal: adjective. Latin digitalis, from digitus+ -alis, -al
1. of or relating to the fingers
2. performed with a finger: "digital examination"
3. ...
Ah, I get it. "Self-digitization" means "fingering yourself".
I don't understand why the idea is so negative to people. I'm pretty sure I can handle knowing my weight and blood pressure without going into an all out panic attack. Having data like that, that was stored on my computer where I or my doctor could easily track my progress/regress would be immensely helpful. Not just because my doctor could see patterns and help diagnose issues or suggest modifications but also because it would be a real time indicator that I couldn't ignore. Some people are in serious denial about their health and need a daily reminder to be mindful of how they're living.
Imagine that you have high blood pressure and your doc says to stop eating out and drinking ten cups of coffee. You swear up and down that you have but your BP has barely moved. The doc checks your urine and fecal analysis (which is tested daily by your toilet at home) and sees that no, three times this week you had supersized bacon cheeseburgers, fries and a soda. Or maybe you're doing everything right but your analysis shows there's still to much salt in your diet leading you to check those lean cuisine frozen dinners you thought were so healthy discovering they are loaded with salt.
Why are we so squeamish about this? Are we so in love with self denial that we can't stand the thought of an unbiased inarguable account of our true behavior?
It to me is a curious intersection of OCD and Hypochondria in some aspects. In other aspects this could be like any mundane "Numbers Comparison" scene. Albeit a bit more personal functions being under comparison. And there's a certain obvious elemental phasing of
"My numbers for X are more this or less that than yours"
Which leads back to a curious division between the comparing sort of us and the non-comparing folks.
Most of us are either uncaring or unaware of things like this even existing. Then there was the guy 3 benches over from mine. Back in 1995-6 or so. His desk computer LOUDLY played the "Danger Will Robinson" robot voice and a several day decrementing counter before "Shark Week." Seems he had several women in his family who were "in sync." And the warning was his reminder to prepare for the storms..
I do wonder if he ever dared tell the women in his life of the alert routine. And arguably his toy DOES fall under the purview of Chronological Quantification eh?
If tech like this were non-disruptive and didn't require me to do anything, it would certainly collect a yakload of data over time.
So, I wonder if having a detailed quantitative medical history would be very useful in future diagnoses, diet regulation, or something along those lines.
Would it be useful?
I can see the day when all kinds of automated somatic tracking will result in the discovery of all kinds of undiagnosed maladies that people suffer from their whole life.
Sleep labs seemed like a whack idea to some people at first. And how many people know the diagnostic benefit of tracking your stools?
Best it all wait until the Age of Surveillance passes away though.
May be worth mentioning the book Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line by Paul Gilroy, published in 2000. His books have stirred some controversy but his argument about the way that these new scientific views of the human body might permit us to move beyond color in the way we identify ourselves as social beings.