{"id":15719,"date":"2013-05-22T23:22:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T03:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=15719"},"modified":"2013-05-26T00:17:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T04:17:27","slug":"what-is-the-quantified-self-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/22\/what-is-the-quantified-self-now\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Quantified Self Now?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"There's<\/a>
There’s A LOT more to (self-)tracking than Quantified Self<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When people ask me what it is that I\u2019m studying for my PhD research, my answer usually begins with, \u201cHave you ever heard of the group Quantified Self<\/a>?\u201d I ask this question because, if the person says yes, it\u2019s a lot easier for me to explain my project (which is looking at different forms of mood tracking<\/a>, primarily within the context of Quantified Self). But sometimes asking this return question makes my explanation more difficult, too, because a lot of people have heard the word \u201cquantified\u201d cozy up to the word \u201cself\u201d in ways that make them feel angry, uncomfortable, or threatened. They don\u2019t at all like what those four syllables sometimes seem to represent, and with good reason: the idea of a \u201cquantified self\u201d can stir images of big data, data mining, surveillance, loss of privacy, loss of agency, mindless fetishization of technology, even utter dehumanization.<\/p>\n

But this is not the Quantified Self that I have come to know.<\/p>\n

As I so often remind people, there\u2019s a lot more to self-tracking than just Quantified Self; these days, there\u2019s a lot more to \u201cquantified self\u201d (lowercase) than just Quantified Self (title case), too[i]<\/a>. One thing that seems to get lost in all this is that, while Quantified Self may be at the forefront of some new methods of self-tracking, it did not initiate the growing popular interest in self-tracking; rather, Quantified Self came to exist because people were already<\/i> self-tracking<\/a>, and some of those people were interested in discussing their self-tracking experiences with others. While Quantified Self does undoubtedly help spread interest in self-tracking (just as increasing interest in self-tracking helps drive the growth of Quantified Self), I think the group\u2019s more significant cultural impact has been to make the very concept of self-tracking more visible\u2014and in so doing, to make tracking-in-general more visible. It is this last function, of making more visible a particularly disconcerting thing that usually fades into the background (e.g. being tracked by others), that I think is at the heart of some people\u2019s deep discomfort when I say \u201cQuantified Self\u201d out loud.<\/p>\n

Yet, in losing track of the distinctions between Quantified Self (title case) and \u201cquantified self,\u201d or between Quantified Self and self-tracking generally, we also lose track of what I increasingly believe is most noteworthy about Quantified Self: its reflexivity. \u201cQSers\u201d don\u2019t just self-track; they also interrogate the experiences, methods, and meanings of their self-tracking practices, and of self-tracking practices generally.<\/b> Over the last two years, I\u2019ve watched reflexive engagement with self-tracking become an increasingly important part of Quantified Self culture (which is something I find very exciting). In fact, I argue that Quantified Self\u2019s most central object of concern<\/a> has slowly shifted from the tools people use to track, to the data those tools and other self-tracking practices generate, to self-tracking practices as meaningful ends onto themselves, to developing \u201creflective capacities<\/a>\u201d not just through<\/i> self-tracking practices, but in regard to<\/i> self-tracking practices. Whether or not one sees Quantified Self as a harbinger of Data Doom, the group is also working to ask questions and to develop practices that could help to resist the very doom that the words \u201cquantified self\u201d sometimes seem to signify.<\/p>\n

\"September,<\/a>
September, 2008: the very first QS meetup (Image credit: Kevin Kelly)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though Gary Wolf (@agaricus<\/a>) and Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly<\/a>) founded the group in 2007, I first became aware of Quantified Self (that\u2019s capital Q, capital S) sometime in the spring of 2010, when I was studying direct-to-consumer genetic testing, \u201ccitizen science,\u201d and the DIY Bio movement as part of my work on what I\u2019ve termed biomedicalization 2.0<\/a>. For a while thereafter, whenever I heard \u201cquantified\u201d and \u201cself\u201d together, it was usually someone talking or writing about Quantified Self. But in early 2012, I started hearing the term all over the place, and I observed it being applied in an increasingly broad array of contexts that had little to do either with Quantified Self or with what I saw going on within the Quantified Self community. This really hit home in April of 2012, when a venture capitalist named Tim Chang wrote a three-part series on \u201cQuantified Self\u201d for TechCrunch. Although Chang was ostensibly writing about the same group I\u2019d been observing, he\u2019d drawn some markedly different conclusions. As he said in an interview, \u201cThis notion of quantified self<\/a> is not just about health and wellness. It\u2019s about your consumer habits all throughout your day, from what sites you surf, what you buy, to what you like to brag about on your Facebook and Twitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chang\u2019s quote demonstrates why it\u2019s important to differentiate between \u201cquantified self\u201d (lowercase) and Quantified Self (title case)\u2014because wow, they are different beasts. Granted, Quantified Self has adopted what anthropologists Dawn Nafus and Jamie Sherman aptly describe as a \u201cbig tent policy<\/a>,\u201d and there were certainly folks who thought Chang\u2019s characterization was spot-on. My own reaction, however, was an incredulous, \u201cWait, what?\u201d Or, as then-Director of Quantified Self Alexandra Carmichael said, \u201c\u2018QS is about gamification and shopping\u2019? Where can I vomit\u2026.\u201d If I\u2019d had any doubt, Chang\u2019s interview was a clear sign that the term \u201cQuantified Self\u201d had escaped into the lexicon and, as \u201cquantified self,\u201d taken on a life of its own.<\/p>\n

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@accarmichael: chang says "quantified self is… about your consumer habits all throughout your day"; all i can think is, 'uh, since when?'<\/p>\n

— whitney erin boesel (@weboesel) April 24, 2012<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n