{"id":17136,"date":"2013-09-26T18:14:15","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T22:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=17136"},"modified":"2013-09-27T03:26:25","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T07:26:25","slug":"return-of-the-quantrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/09\/26\/return-of-the-quantrepreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Quantrepreneurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_17142\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17142\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-17142\" alt=\"Image credit: Charles O'Rear\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa-500x281.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa-500x281.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa-250x140.jpg 250w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa-400x225.jpg 400w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image credit: Charles O&#8217;Rear<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It\u2019s fall again\u2014that time of year when the days shorten, the air turns crisp (at least in New England), and a young researcher\u2019s mind turns to two things: 1) pumpkin beer, and 2) the Bay Area edition of the annual Quantified Self conference (which now goes by <a href=\"http:\/\/quantifiedself.com\/conference\/San-Francisco-2013\/\" target=\"_blank\">Quantified Self Global<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>If that\u2019s not where your mind turns, I guess that\u2019s understandable: pumpkin beer isn\u2019t for everyone, and this is only the second time Quantified Self Global has happened in the fall; QS2011, the very first Quantified Self conference, happened in the spring. Be that as it may, I\u2019ve been thinking about QS13 for a while now, and\u2014since I just realized I get on a plane to California a week from Monday\u2014I thought I\u2019d write about it. More specifically, I\u2019m going to revisit my wrap-up post from Quantified Self Europe 2013 (QSEU13) last May, wander through some musings on individualism and Bay Area culture, consider some recent developments in the Boston QS community, and end with some speculation about what I might find in San Francisco next month.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Habitual readers will recall that I <a title=\"The Missing Trackers?\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/10\/the-missing-trackers\/\" target=\"_blank\">attended QSEU13<\/a> <a title=\"You, Me, Them: Who is the Quantified Self?\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/15\/you-me-them-who-is-the-quantified-self\/\" target=\"_blank\">last spring<\/a> <a title=\"What is the Quantified Self Now?\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/22\/what-is-the-quantified-self-now\/\" target=\"_blank\">in Amsterdam<\/a>, and that it was a pretty incredible experience. As QS co-founder Gary Wolf indicated in his welcome speech, the <a href=\"http:\/\/quantifiedself.com\/conference\/Amsterdam-2013\/\" target=\"_blank\">Quantified Self Europe<\/a> conference does feel very different from the Quantified Self Global conference, and the differences I observed were exciting to me. Yet since I\u2019d never been to a QSEU before, I wasn\u2019t sure how much of the difference I was seeing was due to the location (Amsterdam versus the Bay Area) and how much was due to change in the Quantified Self community overall. In particular, I want to revisit two observations I made:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Quantified Self Europe felt \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/22\/what-is-the-quantified-self-now\/\" target=\"_blank\">much less startup-y<\/a>\u201d than Quantified Self Global;<\/li>\n<li>I <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/22\/what-is-the-quantified-self-now\/\" target=\"_blank\">didn\u2019t hear the term \u201ccompliance\u201d<\/a> even once at Quantified Self Europe 2013, whereas I\u2019d heard it a lot at Quantified Self Global 2011 (but not so much at Quantified Self Global 2012).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Could it be, I wondered, that quantrepreneur interest in Quantified Self might be starting to wane? Might the very technoutopian neoliberal individualism that\u2019s endemic to the Greater Bay Area\u2014and which, as such, informs both Quantified Self and Silicon Valley start-up culture\u2014actually be working to thwart corporate efforts to commodify self-tracking through the Quantified Self community?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/siliconvalley_film_landing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17143\" alt=\"siliconvalley_film_landing\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/siliconvalley_film_landing-400x240.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/siliconvalley_film_landing-400x240.jpg 400w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/siliconvalley_film_landing-250x150.jpg 250w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/siliconvalley_film_landing.jpg 478w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To explain that question, let\u2019s back up and unpack a little. As Fred Turner brilliantly traces out in his book <a href=\"http:\/\/fredturner.stanford.edu\/books\/from-counterculture-to-cyberculture\/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism<\/i><\/a>, present-day <a title=\"Dear Technoutopianism\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/12\/15\/dear-technoutopianism\/\" target=\"_blank\">technoutopianism<\/a> (or digital utopianism) has significant roots in a specific strain of 1960s counterculture that Turner terms <i>new communalism<\/i>. The New Communalists distrusted traditional institutions and authority, and embraced a frontier mentality (often by taking to \u2018the frontier\u2019 itself). When new communalism, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Homebrew_Computer_Club\">the Homebrew Computer Club<\/a>, and a rising tide of deregulation (to name just a few of many critical factors; see book) all collided up and down the San Francisco Bay in the 1980s, the resultant ideology (unsurprisingly) held that a combination of individuals (unhindered by tradition), private industry (unhindered by government interference), and technological innovation would ultimately be the key to solving the world\u2019s problems. Today, this ideology is a key piece of undergirding for Silicon Valley startup culture (and accordingly, startup culture generally).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no coincidence that both contemporary technoutopian cyberculture and <a href=\"http:\/\/quantifiedself.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\">Quantified Self <\/a>both originated in the Bay Area (if a generation apart), just like it\u2019s no coincidence that Quantified Self founders Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly are both alumni of <i>Wired <\/i>magazine (a thoroughly neoliberal technoutopian publication to which Barbrook and Cameron cheekily refer as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alamut.com\/subj\/ideologies\/pessimism\/califIdeo_I.html\">the monthly bible of the \u2018virtual class\u2019<\/a>\u201d). As illustrated in Wolf\u2019s seminal New York Times essay \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/02\/magazine\/02self-measurement-t.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0\">The Data-Driven Life<\/a>,\u201d one of the most classic QS narratives is built on an updated New Communalist chassis: self-motivated individuals use new technologies to gain self-knowledge, become \u2018experts of themselves\u2019 (to use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/1386610.Inventing_Our_Selves\">Nikolas Rose\u2019s term<\/a>), and assert both their individuality and their autonomy against mass-market culture and the authority of traditional \u201cexperts\u201d like doctors. As Wolf concludes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Adler\u2019s idea that we can \u2014 and should \u2014 defend ourselves against the imposed generalities of official knowledge is typical of pioneering self-trackers, and it shows how closely the dream of a quantified self resembles therapeutic ideas of self-actualization, even as its methods are startlingly different. Trackers focused on their health want to ensure that their medical practitioners don\u2019t miss the particulars of their condition; trackers who record their mental states are often trying to find their own way to personal fulfillment amid the seductions of marketing and the errors of common opinion; fitness trackers are trying to tune their training regimes to their own body types and competitive goals, but they are also looking to understand their strengths and weaknesses, to uncover potential they didn\u2019t know they had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I\u2019ve stated before in somewhat different terms, the \u201cself\u201d (or, more accurately, the concept of a \u201cself\u201d) is at the core of Quantified Self, moreso than is \u201cquantification\u201d; self-knowledge, self-discovery, self-determination, and self-empowerment (etcetera) are all central to QS culture and the QS ethos. Although both what, exactly, the implied \u201cself\u201d of Quantified Self is\u2014as well as how it comes into being\u2014are highly variable across different QS practices and subgroups, one thing remains remarkably consistent: the implied or imagined \u201cself\u201d of Quantified Self is almost always an individual self, an independent and autonomous self. I believe this emphasis on an independent, autonomous, individual self is in large part responsible both for Quantified Self\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.castac.org\/2013\/03\/the-quantified-self-movement-is-not-a-kleenex\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cbig tent\u201d policy<\/a> and for the attendant variety of interests and practices represented at the QS conferences. It is also, however, where things start to get interesting when we consider the quantrepreneurs.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t know what a \u201cquantrepreneur\u201d is, don\u2019t worry\u2014you\u2019re not alone; I\u2019m regularly surprised by the number of people I encounter who haven\u2019t heard the term before, though those familiar with the QS community usually know which subgroup I mean when I use it. (I wish I could take credit for coining \u201cquantrepreneur,\u201d but I\u2019m reasonably certain I picked it up somewhere along the line at either QSEU13 or QS2012; the term is a portmanteau of \u201cquantified\u201d and \u201centrepreneur.\u201d) Put simply, <strong>a quantrepreneur is someone who turns up somewhere in the Quantified Self milieu because he or she is looking to capitalize on the growing interest in self-tracking<\/strong>, frequently (though certainly not always) via a startup that\u2019s making an app or a device. Although there are plenty of folks within the Quantified Self community who started out as self-trackers, and who later formed companies to market self-tracking tools they\u2019d initially designed for themselves, my sense is that\u2014especially when used pejoratively\u2014the term \u201cquantrepreneur\u201d more often applies to people who attend Quantified Self events solely as company representatives or venture capitalists, or who are marketing tools they did not themselves create (and may not even use). When people were saying that Quantified Self Europe 2013 felt \u201ca lot less startup-y\u201d than the Quantified Self Global conferences, a big part of what they meant was, \u201cI\u2019ve met fewer quantrepreneurs here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why is the individualism of Quantified Self tricky for quantrepreneurs? After all, technoutopian neoliberal individualism brings us both Bay Area startup culture and Quantified Self; both the action of striking out alone to pursue self-knowledge (with some gadgets and some shared knowledge and a community of like-minded others) and the action of striking out alone to start your own company (with some cofounders and some venture capitalists and maybe some employees) are pretty Autonomous Individual\u2122 things to do. So entrepreneurialism and Quantified Self should go hand in hand (or hand in gadget), right? Yet as a quantrepreneur, there\u2019s only so much marketing you can do\u00a0before your (self-)marketing becomes telling someone else what to do, casting yourself as some kind of authority, or in some other way running afoul of someone else\u2019s individual autonomy. Share your own success story, and QSers will listen; offer an app or a device, and QSers who think it might be useful will probably go out and try it (and, especially if they\u2019re happy with it, tell all their friends). But if you come on too strong in your sales pitch (especially during a <a href=\"http:\/\/quantifiedself.com\/how-to-start-your-own-qs-showtell\/\" target=\"_blank\">Show &amp; Tell session<\/a>), some QSers will be turned off; try to force anything down anyone else\u2019s throat\u2014especially if you haven\u2019t so much as sampled that Kool-Aid yourself\u2014and you\u2019ll probably just be ignored. People may attend Quantified Self events to share ideas, to problem-solve, to learn from peers, to network, or even to make friends, but no one attends a Quantified Self event to be told what to do. Quantified Self and Silicon Valley entrepreneurialism may be products of similar social forces, but poorly-played quantrepreneurialism is the \u2018double negative\u2019 of individualism; it cancels itself out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/05\/QS-tip-iceberg.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-15722\" alt=\"QS-tip-iceberg\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/05\/QS-tip-iceberg-365x400.jpg\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/05\/QS-tip-iceberg-365x400.jpg 365w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/05\/QS-tip-iceberg-228x250.jpg 228w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/05\/QS-tip-iceberg-456x500.jpg 456w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 365px) 100vw, 365px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Along similar lines, this is why I feel so befuddled every time I encounter people who come to Quantified Self events in order to learn something about how to increase \u201ccompliance\u201d among their patients or insurance subscribers. Sometimes these attendees represent startups that want to sell apps or devices to doctors and insurance companies, and sometimes these attendees represent institutional healthcare companies directly (what Clarke et al would call the <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=LiOheK_2uZ8C&amp;pg=PA57&amp;lpg=PA57&amp;dq=biomedical+technoservice+complex+inc&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=8Bu90Tf5P6&amp;sig=84zOD-GE_d3ZKpCfsmb8hsoncsQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=ChtFUvGQJ_Cg4AOYt4DwCA&amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;q=biomedical%20technoservice%20complex%20inc&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">Biomedical TechnoService Complex, Inc<\/a>); in either case, such efforts represent what I\u2019ve (somewhat artlessly) decided to call \u201cother-mandated self-tracking.\u201d The question these representatives bring is not \u201cHow can I learn _____ about myself, or accomplish _____ in my life, through collecting data about myself,\u201d but rather, \u201cHow can I get other people to collect data about themselves, and then use that data to get those people to do what I want them to do?\u201d I get that \u201cquantified self\u201d (lowercase) has become a sexy catchphrase; that \u201cdata\u201d and \u201cinformation\u201d are buzzwords; that throwing new technologies at the surfaces of old problems is hardly limited to Silicon Valley; and that there\u2019s a lot of money going into trying to make institutional healthcare more \u201cefficient\u201d or \u201ccost-effective.\u201d And in a way, if one\u2019s goal is to increase the power of traditional medical authority (increase compliance), it does make sense to study people who often reject that authority (even if they embrace traditionally \u201cmedical\u201d technologies and knowledge bases). Yet I don\u2019t see the medical quantrepreneurs asking, \u201cWhat does the growing interest in (self-directed) self-tracking tell us about how we need to improve institutional healthcare?\u201d Instead, it seems like a <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=LiOheK_2uZ8C&amp;pg=PA57&amp;lpg=PA57&amp;dq=biomedical+technoservice+complex+inc&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=8Bu90Tf5P6&amp;sig=84zOD-GE_d3ZKpCfsmb8hsoncsQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=ChtFUvGQJ_Cg4AOYt4DwCA&amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=snippet&amp;q=co-optation&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">classic biomedicalization co-optation move<\/a>\u2014less reflection, more, \u201cOooh, apps! They\u2019ve got apps! Can we get apps?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The underlying logic here seems to be that, if there\u2019s a group of people who are voluntarily doing (self-directed) self-tracking, it should be a piece of cake to extrapolate from that phenomenon into getting the General Populace self-tracking in the service of their physicians and HMOs. That logic, however, utterly fails to grasp the ideological frameworks that inform Quantified Self practices (to say nothing of the degree of societal privilege enjoyed by the average QSer). You can \u201cgamify\u201d apps and \u201cincentivize\u201d patients all you want, and certainly doing so will draw in some patients or insurance subscribers (at least for a time). At the time of writing, however, I remain convinced that attempts to translate the largely self-directed self-tracking practices of Quantified Self into other-mandated self-tracking compliance tools will ultimately prove futile, because such attempts fail to take into account the personal, cultural, and structural reasons that self-directed self-trackers track in the first place. We can argue all day about whether it\u2019s possible to destroy the master\u2019s house with the master\u2019s tools, but I\u2019m reasonably certain that\u2014if you\u2019ve got someone chipping away at your house with a pickaxe\u2014making your own brand of pickaxes and then handing them out to passers-by is not, in fact, going to repair your retaining wall.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17148\" alt=\"startup\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup-400x250.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup-400x250.jpg 400w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup-250x156.jpg 250w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup-500x312.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/startup.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To recap: we\u2019ve established what a \u201cquantrepreneur\u201d is, and that the quantrepreneurial presence at Quantified Self Europe 2013 was much less pronounced than at Quantified Self Global 2011 or 2012. We\u2019ve also established that I encountered fewer medical quantrepreneurs at Quantified Self Europe 2013 than I did at Quantified Self Global 2012, and fewer at Quantified Self Global 2012 than I did at Quantified Self Global 2011. What I didn\u2019t know last spring, however, was what percentage of these differences I should ascribe to the \u201c2013-ness\u201d of Quantified Self Europe 2013 (aka, to ongoing change in Quantified Self as the group continues to grow) and what percentage I should ascribe to the \u201cEurope-ness\u201d of Quantified Self Europe 2013 (especially the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2012\/06\/heres-a-map-of-the-countries-that-provide-universal-health-care-americas-still-not-on-it\/259153\/\">most of Europe has nationalized healthcare<\/a>). Both back in May and now, in late September, I\u2019m looking forward to Quantified Self Global 2013 as my next point for large-scale comparison\u2014but some interesting things have happened in the meantime, too.<\/p>\n<p>The first recent development is that I attended an event called \u201cThe Quantified Patient\u201d here in Cambridge, and was <i>floored<\/i> to see not only that medical quantrepreneurialism is alive and well (in fact, it can still pack a couple hundred people into a room), but that in August of 2013, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0XRZmTrMeI0\">at<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SWTniZSUSGE\">least<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SFLafJPzOQE\">one<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_WWRmh9T7vQ\">panel<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=08wgZZsIvNc\">of<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=olATIJfB2RI\">speakers<\/a> seemed to think they were onto something cutting edge and new with it. Granted, my jaw would have fallen more into my lap and less onto the floor if I\u2019d actually read Boston Quantified Self\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/131152382\/\">description of the event<\/a> (instead of simply glancing at the email announcement and thinking, \u201coh, Quantified Patient, I should probably go to that\u201d), but\u2014as anyone following my Twitter stream that night observed\u2014I spent the evening with my head spinning, and my thumbs flying:<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">3 talks into <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/qspatient?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#qspatient<\/a>. revising assessment: event called \u201cthe quantified patient,\u201d but geared toward doctors, ins corps, &amp; quantrepreneurs<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; whitney erin boesel (@weboesel) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/weboesel\/status\/372864544743620608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 28, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">kvenar: motivation comes from knowing dr\u2019s watching; can apps \u201cbabysit\u201d instead? stark contrast to usual <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/quantifiedself?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@quantifiedself<\/a> rhetoric <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/qspatient?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#qspatient<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; whitney erin boesel (@weboesel) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/weboesel\/status\/372860316595789824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 28, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">lots of talk at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/qspatient?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#qspatient<\/a> abt \u201creal people,\u201d what they want &amp; how to get them to do what *you* want\u2014but real ppl compared to \u201cprairie dogs\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; whitney erin boesel (@weboesel) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/weboesel\/status\/372871698007478272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 29, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Luckily, I\u2019d attended \u201cThe Quantified Patient\u201d with two other social scientists, and so got to spend the ride home debriefing with like-minded folks about my unexpected trip to the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/weboesel\/statuses\/372871117926850560\">Quantified Twilight Zone<\/a>. It had been a while since I\u2019d encountered straight-up \u201chow do WE<em>\u00a0<\/em>get THEM to start tracking,\u201d and\u2014though my observational acuity at Quantified Self Global 2013 will be the better for having had the experience\u2014I definitely hadn\u2019t gone into \u201cThe Quantified Patient\u201d ready for the discomfort that comes from lurking among privileged people who are unselfconsciously making disparaging remarks about less powerful others. If I&#8217;d somehow managed to attend while dead, I&#8217;d have been turning in my grave.<\/p>\n<p>The second recent development is that, as far as I can tell, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/bostonQS\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boston Quantified Self<\/a>\u00a0just underwent a kind of mitosis. A week ago, Boston QS organizer Joshua Kotfila made the following announcement:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It has been an amazing year since I stepped into the role of lead organizer for the Boston Quantified Self group. In that time we have seen the group over double in size, adding 700+ new members. Through the hard work of our dedicated team of organizers we have continued the tradition started by co-founder <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gary_Wolf_(journalist)\">Gary Wolf<\/a> and the Bay Area QS group of holding &#8220;show&amp;tells&#8221; where members can share their personal self-tracking stories, while also creating new event formats to serve the needs of our growing community. With events including our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/111251842\/\">Health &amp; Wellness Innovation Night<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/quantifiedpatient.eventbrite.com\/\">The Quantified Patient<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/122986832\/\">Women&#8217;s Health event<\/a>, and our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/118180312\/\">Ideas to Action series<\/a> we have been able to partner with amazing organizations including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ideo.com\/\">IDEO<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.athenahealth.com\/\">athenahealth<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.withings.com\/\">Withings<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ilab.harvard.edu\/\">Harvard i-lab<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bodymedia.com\/\">Bodymedia<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.syncstrength.com\/\">SyncStrength<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/neumitra.com\/\">Neumitra<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telome.com\/\">TeloMe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidetracker.com\/\">Segterra<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ovuline.com\/\">Ovuline<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/media.mit.edu\/\">MIT Media Lab<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mequilibrium.com\/\">meQuilibrium<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ubiqihealth.com\/\">Ubiqi Health<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/restwise.com\/\">RestWise<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fitlinxx.net\/\">FitLinxx<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.restdevices.com\/\">Rest Devices<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.partners.org\/\">Partners Healthcare<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elizacorporation.com\/\">Eliza Corporation<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ginger.io\/\">Ginger.io<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/endeavourpartners.net\/\">Endeavour Partners<\/a> to bring the Boston QS community exciting events featuring world-class speakers and innovators.<\/p>\n<p>Due to this growth and expansion into additional areas of focus I have decided, in collaboration with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gary_Wolf_(journalist)\">Gary Wolf<\/a> the co-founder of Quantified Self, to create the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/Self-Tracking\/\">Self-Tracking<\/a> group. The Self-Tracking group will be the connection point for industry professionals, researchers and users who are part of the emerging self-tracking ecosystem. This will allow the Boston Quantified Self group to remain focused solely on traditional show&amp;tells while the Self-Tracking group focuses on events like the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/111251842\/\">Health &amp; Wellness Innovation Night<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/quantifiedpatient.eventbrite.com\/\">The Quantified Patient<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/122986832\/\">Women&#8217;s Health event<\/a>, and our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/BostonQS\/events\/118180312\/\">Ideas to Action series<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At first, I wasn\u2019t entirely sure what this meant\u2014what, exactly, is \u201cthe emerging self-tracking ecosystem\u201d? It took a second read-through, but I\u2019m reasonably certain that what just happened is this: <b>quantrepreneurialism has spun off into its own group<\/b>, a group that is closely related to\u2014but ultimately separate from\u2014the Boston Quantified Self meetup group. Confusingly, this means that \u201cBoston Quantified Self\u201d will be the place where people present their self-tracking projects (which may or may not involve any degree of quantification), while \u201cthe Self-Tracking group\u201d will house quantrepreneurial efforts and networking events (which may or may not be about \u2018us\u2019 getting \u2018them\u2019 to track). I anticipate a fair amount of overlap between the two groups, and that some people will both present their personal self-tracking projects at Boston Quantified Self and promote their tracking-related startups at the Self-Tracking group. Still, it will be interesting to see how the Boston Quantified Self meetups change following this split (if at all), as well as whether Quantified Self meetup groups in other cities end up following suit.<\/p>\n<p>Third, and finally, is a development that\u2019s less directly related to quantrepreneurialism, but of particular interest to me personally: the formation of QSXX (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/QSXX-Quantified-Self-Womens-Meetup\/\">Quantified Self Women\u2019s Meetup<\/a>, in the Bay Area) last July, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/QSXX-Quantified-Self-Womens-Meetup-Boston\/\">QSXX Boston<\/a> in response last August. Apparently I\u2019m <a href=\"http:\/\/quantifiedself.com\/2013\/07\/the-first-quantified-self-womens-meetup\/\">not the only woman<\/a> who spends time in the QS milieu, but who can <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/15\/you-me-them-who-is-the-quantified-self\/\">barely imagine presenting her own self-tracking projects<\/a>; though I\u2019m enough of a sociologist to know that none of us is really as unique as all that, I\u2019m also enough of a squishy human to feel weirdly validated when I discover experiential overlap with others. Although I wasn\u2019t able to attend the first QSXX Boston meeting, I did attend the second one earlier this week\u2014and was fascinated to find that our small group was a little under half \u201cwomen fairly involved in Quantified Self,\u201d and a little over half \u201cwomen who have never been to a Quantified Self event\u201d; we had no \u201cregular\u201d QSers at all. I\u2019m told the two QSXX groups will be the topic of a breakout session at Quantified Self Global 2013, and I\u2019m really interested to see how that discussion goes (for a whole host of reasons); I\u2019m also eager to see whether more QSXX groups form in other cities.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17150\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17150\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/more-tents.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17150\" alt=\"(These are small tents, but you get the idea.)\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/more-tents-400x196.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/more-tents-400x196.jpg 400w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/more-tents-250x122.jpg 250w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/more-tents.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17150\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(These are small tents, but you get the idea.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In conclusion, Quantified Self has a &#8220;big tent&#8221; policy, and Quantified Self has continued to grow\u2014but it\u2019s starting to look as though the future of Quantified Self might involve buying more tents and starting an encampment, rather than attempting to make the existing tent even bigger. In two cities, QS women are meeting in groups of their own; in at least one city, quantrepreneurs are taking their more overt quantrepreneuriations to a separate stage; I thought the medical quantrepreneurs had gotten bored and wandered away, but apparently they\u2019re still here (and just spending less time with the rest of the group?); every now and again I hear quiet murmurs\u2014and not-so-quiet murmurs, as <a title=\"You, Me, Them: Who is the Quantified Self?\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/05\/15\/you-me-them-who-is-the-quantified-self\/\" target=\"_blank\">in my QSEU13 breakout session<\/a>\u2014of experimental self-trackers who want to split off and escape self-trackers who are \u201cmerely\u201d life-logging. Both at Quantified Self Global 2013 and subsequently, I\u2019ll be interested to see whether people who believe Quantified Self is \u201ca movement\u201d have a different take on the Self-Tracking and QSXX groups than do others who see Quantified Self as a group, trend, or hobby; I\u2019m also interested to see whether any kind of stratification develops, either between Quantified Self and its related offshoots, or within Quantified Self itself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Whitney Erin Boesel tends to livetweet conferences (like #qs13); she sometimes livetweets other things, too, even if she has to make up her own hashtag (like at #qspatient). Share the (mis)adventures by following her: she&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/weboesel\" target=\"_blank\">@weboesel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Silicon Valley film logo from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/americanexperience\/films\/silicon\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>; tent image from <a href=\"http:\/\/inhabitat.com\/modular-decagon-tents-expand-into-cozy-honeycomb-shelters\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s fall again\u2014that time of year when the days shorten, the air turns crisp (at least in New England), and a young researcher\u2019s mind turns to two things: 1) pumpkin beer, and 2) the Bay Area edition of the annual Quantified Self conference (which now goes by Quantified Self Global). If that\u2019s not where your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":17142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967,892],"tags":[1560,18412,23043,23053,12584,23049,1139,588,11350,23041,19957,23042,23051,16723,23044,23046,23045,3455,18408,23048,23047,18414],"class_list":["post-17136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-essay","tag-apps","tag-biomedicalization","tag-boston-quantified-self","tag-compliance","tag-fred-turner","tag-from-counterculture-to-cyberculture","tag-healthcare","tag-individualism","tag-neoliberalism","tag-qs13","tag-qseu13","tag-qsxx","tag-quantified-patient","tag-quantified-self","tag-quantrepreneur","tag-quantrepreneurialism","tag-quantrepreneurs","tag-self","tag-self-tracking","tag-startup-culture","tag-startups","tag-technoutopianism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/09\/silicon-valley-san-jose-california-san-francisco-bay-area-usa.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17136"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17163,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17136\/revisions\/17163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}