2(1) 2016: Quantified Selves

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Bodies, Mood and Excess. Relationship Tracking and the Technicity of Intimacy
Lambert, Alex (2016)
A range of commercial mobile technologies are emerging which use psychophysiological sensors to monitor bodies and behaviour to produce new forms of knowledge about social relationships. In this paper I am concerned with how this kind of relationship-tracking influences intimacy. I am specifically interested in what I call the “technicity of intimacy”, the cultural techniques which emerge through the historically contingent technologisation of intimacy. Based on archival research, I argue that relationship-tracking promises to take up the intensive social labours associated with contemporary intimacy. Yet, the psychophysiological measurements these technologies rely on produce partial and ambiguous indicators of intimate life, gesturing toward an excess of intimate meaning that cannot be interrogated. The self-reflexive concern with this excess drives further tracking experiments and techniques. Yet intimacy remains a continuous mystery, and this problematises the value of self-tracking as a system dedicated to achieving meaningful selfknowledge and completeness.
Casual Power. Understanding User Interfaces through Quantification
Gekker, Alex (2016)
The paper draws parallels between quantification as found in the user interfaces of video games, to similar elements of more “serious” devices, in particular mapping and navigational platforms. I present an autoethnographic study of a mundane experience that would be familiar to many Google Maps users: locating a nearby place of interest and figuring out how to reach it. The navigational case is used as a canvas for a further analysis of the role of quantified elements in user interfaces. My autoethnography shows how the mundane actions performed on the screen are informed by the necessary reductions that mapped media perform on the physical world. Such reductions are imitated and enabled by user interfaces designed to control and guide user attention. Designers aim to simplify and streamline user interactions with the system and such practices are built on tracking the user and habituating the actions she performs through the screen.
Coupling Quantified Bodies. Affective Possibilities of Self-Quantification beyond the Self
Cercós, Robert; Goddard, William; Nash, Adam; Yuille, Jeremy (2016)
The main promise behind the idea of self-quantification is to transform our lives through the continuous collection of numerical evidence about the body and its activity. Although this process may help boost self-knowledge, everyday life also involves a complex network of relations with other bodies that exert a significant, sometimes determining, influence on our behaviour. To address this concern, we suggest that self-quantification data can be modulated as perturbations to other human and non-human bodies that, in turn, may directly affect the everyday practices of the self. By coupling quantified bodies, we transform existing practices by disrupting the elements that realise, perform and reproduce existing practices. In order to explore and further understand the affective potential of this idea, we designed a system that creates unfamiliar, digitally enabled couplings between two quantified bodies: a human and a plant. In particular, in this design experiment we modulate walking activity data into perturbations to a quantified plant. How does this coupling transform the way we look at self-quantification? Are we bringing forth a new space of responsibility and ethical concern? What if the plant dies because someone did not walk enough? In this article we discuss the implications of creating such a coupling keeping a critical distance to current forms of self-quantification, which are often focused on change through prescriptive solutions rather than through the fostering of self-determined growth. With this work we aim to expand the current understanding of the affective possibilities of self-quantification in the context of social change.
From Quantified to Qualified Self. A Fictional Dialogue at the Mall
Belliger, Andréa; Krieger, David J. (2016)
Quantifying the self is not enough; numbers and statistics must be interpreted, that is, integrated into networks of identity, society, and meaning. The quantified self must become a “qualified” self if body tracking is to have any impact on our lives and society. Data generated by body tracking in all forms are not merely a passive material for interpretation, they do not merely lie around in databases until something from outside makes meaning out of them. Data become information and flow in global networks. Without access to data, individuals must rely on experts and expert systems. Putting body-related data into the hands of those who are directly concerned makes them responsible for doing something with the data, for interpreting and making use of the data. Interpreting the data of body tracking occurs as networking. It breaks out of the constraints of modern subjectivity as well as paternalistic health care structures and occurs by participation, communication, and transparency, that is, by following “network norms.” Personal informatics and body tracking is a performative enactment of the informational self. The informational self is neither the product of technologies of power (Foucault), but of an “ethical” technology of the self. The self becomes a hub and an agent in the digital network society. Body tracking transforms the opaque and passive body of the pre-digital age into the informational self. Networking is the way in which order – personal, social, and ontological – is constructed in the digital age.
Games to Live With. Speculations Regarding NikeFuel
Ruffino, Paolo (2016)
In this paper I offer an alternative way to look at games that require no form of play. The player of these games is only supposed to keep them always up-to-date and running, but no specific action is required. NikeFuel is a significant example of this kind of game. NikeFuel, a technology for the quantification of body movement developed by the sports company Nike, is applied in a series of gadgets. The most popular, Nike+, is a wristband that quantifies the movements of the user and converts them into a NikeFuel score, which can later be visualised on a laptop or mobile phone. The act of moving throughout the day is transformed into a game-like experience, according to the principles of gamification. Gamification and quantified-self technologies have been noted for their performative potential and their capacity to control and inform our bodies (Whitson 2015). From a Foucauldian perspective, quantified-self technologies are attempts to rationalise the practices and movements of living organisms, as forms of biopolitical control (Foucault 2005, Schrape 2014). However, these are also spaces of transformation of the conditions under which the self becomes possible. Through NikeFuel, and other examples that I explore in this paper (Farmville, Cookie Clicker, CarnageHug), the player has to come to terms with games that act as parasites on their own lives. Thus, I argue that Nike+ can also be seen to complicate our thoughts about the contemporary digital technologies that surround us on an everyday basis. In this paper I will argue, possibly counter-intuitively, that gamification and quantified-self technologies are not necessarily tools that we use for a specific purpose; these are technologies we carry around with us and live with. As such, we are transformed by them as much as we transform them. Thus, the problem raised in this paper is about how we can co-habit and be hospitable with these “parasites” (Serres 1982).
How Old am I? Digital Culture and Quantified Ageing
Marshall, Barbara L.; Katz, Stephen (2016)
In previous work we argued that ageing bodies and changes across the life-course were becoming measured, standardised, and treated according to a new logic of functionality, supplanting traditional categories of normality (Katz/Marshall 2004). In particular, the binary between the ‘functional’ and the ‘dysfunctional’ has become a powerful tool in mapping and distributing bodies around datapoints, functional subsystems, and posthuman informatics. In this paper, we extend this line of analysis by exploring how current developments in self-tracking technologies and the proliferation of digital apps are creating new modes and styles of ‘quantified ageing’. In particular, we identify four interrelated fields for inquiry that are specifically relevant in setting out a research agenda on ageing quantified selves and statistical bodies: 1) ‘Wearables’ and mobile technologies, including both technologies designed for selfmonitoring/self-improvement (health, fitness, sleep, mood and so on) and those designed for surveillance of and ‘management’ of ageing individuals by children, caregivers or institutions. 2) Digital apps, including those that collect and connect data uploaded from wearable devices, and those that deploy various algorithms for ‘calculating’ age and its correlates. 3) The rhetorics of games and scores in age-related apps such as those used in digital ‘brain training’ games that track a person’s imagined cognitive plasticity and enhancement, while promising protection against memory loss and even dementia. 4) The political economy of data sharing, aggregation and surveillance of ageing populations. Conclusions ponder wider sociological questions; for example, how will the insurance industry acquire and use data from digital health technologies to produce new actuarial standards? How will older individuals plan their futures according to the risks assembled through quantifying technologies? We argue that the technical turn to new ways of quantifying and standardising measurements of age raises a range of complex and important questions about ageism, agency and inequality.
I Think it Worked Because Mercury was in the House of Jupiter! Tega Brain and Surya Mattu in Conversation with Pablo Abend and Mathias Fuchs
Brain, Tega; Mattu, Surya; Abend, Pablo; Fuchs, Mathias (2016)
Introduction. The Quantified Self and Statistical Bodies
Abend, Pablo; Fuchs, Mathias (2016)
My Quantified Self, my FitBit and I. The Polymorphic Concept of Health Data and the Sharer’s Dilemma
Karanasiou, Argyro P.; Kang, Sharanjit (2016)
The rise of wearable tech, namely devices with sensors measuring the user’s daily activities and habits seems to be suggesting a paradox in the post-Snowden era: On one hand, it is generally accepted that unauthorised use, storage and processing of the user’s private data by the state directly clashes with our fundamental rights for privacy; on the other, the user seems to be keen on self-recording and storing one’s own data by willingly using sensors, enabling him to learn more about one’s habits, general health status or even personality. In the era of wearable tech we seem to be accepting that measuring data is not a privacy infringement but a self-surveillance exercise in a quest to get to know ourselves better, most acute to exercising one’s right to free expression. Yet, how is this addressed in legal terms? The focal point for this paper is to address the nascent phenomenon of users actively partaking in the QS movement by wilfully sharing health related datasets. Part 1 notes the transition from the “right to be let alone” to the right to own one’s data as the underlying rational for QS: is it a form of expression regarding a tradable commodity in a free market or a matter of greater public importance? Part 2 dissects the dilemma in sharing health data for public health and/or research purposes exceeding the strict limits of private sphere. The unfortunate case of Google Health, the unconstitutional purchase of Iceland’s national datasets by deCODE and the mishap of the Care.data are studied to shed light to the many faces of our Quantified Selves: Is the current legislative approach fit for facilitating the QS movement, as a type of self-expression? The paper critically examines self-measurement technologies from a legal perspective and calls for urgent reforms in self-measured data protection.
Quantified Bodies. A Design Practice
Dyer, James (2016)
Self-trackers are a diffuse and diverse group that quantify their lives. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, intimate and vital happenings that occur on (infra)-empirical planes are cast as legible events. The tracked data consists of blood pressure, heartbeat rate, testosterone levels, posture, diet, muscle tension, social activity or geographical position. These are now happenings to be intervened upon and rendered as units of measurement and comparable variables. These measurements may give insight to help rebuild a recognition of oneself (Catani 2015), or allow a brooding recall of lost moments (Kalina 2012) – this is the manifest quantified body, a body read and a body written. Yet the quantified body is a veneer, it is the outward appearance of control, awareness and care-for-self: we were cynical subjects (Sloterdijk 1987) long before we were quantified bodies. However, self-tracking intrinsically disassociates from the ubiquitous cynical condition. The cynical self-tracker gropes for independence whilst submitting to a life of mediated self-discovery, it is a renunciation of independent vitality so as to act “as if”, to appear to be whilst never being – to fall short of realising difference. It is argued here that the quantified body allocates us all to be designers – reading and writing in culture. And as such, our actions must be critiqued as a symptom of a design practice, where the condition of subjectivity is at the forefront of value-making in taste, style and fashion. How does the cynic self-track? What is the value of design in the field of new media and digital culture?
Quantified Faces. On Surveillance Technologies, Identification and Statistics in Three Contemporary Art Projects
Zacher Sørensen, Mette-Marie (2016)
The article presents three contemporary art projects that, in various ways, thematise questions regarding numerical representation of the human face in relation to the identification of faces, for example through the use of biometric video analysis software, or DNA technology. The Dutch artist Marnix de Nijs’ Physiognomic Scrutinizer is an interactive installation whereby the viewer’s face is scanned and identified with historical figures. The American artist Zach Blas’ project Fag Face Mask consists of three-dimensional portraits that blend biometric facial data from 30 gay men’s faces and critically examine bias in surveillance technologies, as well as scientific investigations, regarding the stereotyping mode of the human gaze. The American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates three-dimensional portraits of persons she has “identified” from their garbage. Her project from 2013 entitled Stranger Visions involves extracting DNA from discarded items she finds in public spaces in New York City, such as cigarette butts and chewing gum. She has the DNA that is extracted from these items analysed for specific genomic sequences associated with physical traits such as hair and eye colour. The three works are analysed with perspectives to historical physiognomy and Francis Galton’s composite portraits from the 1800s. It is argued that, rather than being a statistical compression like the historical composites, contemporary statistical visual portraits (composites) are irreversible and complicated amalgams. The article furthermore examines questions regarding the agency of the technologies used by the artists.
Theorising the Quantified Self and Posthumanist Agency. Self-Knowledge and Posthumanist Agency in Contemporary US-American Literature
Danter, Stefan; Reichardt, Ulfried; Schober, Regina (2016)
In our paper we will examine the cultural implications of the quantified self technology and analyse how contemporary US-American novels reflect and comment on the qualitative changes of the human condition against the backdrop of an interpretive dominance held by the natural and social sciences as well as the changes effected by quantitative methods. Moreover, we will investigate some historical and cultural continuities of the quantified self within US-American culture. We claim that, although the quantified self is a global phenomenon, it has emerged from a model of subjectivity which has been deeply engrained in American culture at least since Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791) and which emphasises individualism, economic self-optimisation, and a techno-euphoric belief in progress, self-control, and self-possession. In this context, the quantified self can be connected to theoretical discourses of 1) economy-driven subjectivity, 2) posthumanism and 3) knowledge cultures of the information age. Drawing on Gary Shteyngart’s recent novel SUPER SAD LOVE STORY (2010), we will map forms and functions of literary engagements with various manifestations of the quantified self in relation to the cross-dependencies between distributed agency, potentials and the limits of knowledge systems, and economic mechanisms. As critical systems of second-order observation, fictional texts reflect on the repercussions of practices related to numerical self-description. At the same time, they constitute epistemological counter models to the relational, modular, and combinatory logic of the database (Manovich 2001; Hayles 1999), by focusing on the qualitative dimension of human experience and thus (re-)inscribing human agency into these “technologies of the self” (Foucault 1984).
Total Affect Control. Or: Who’s Afraid of a Pleasing Little Sister?
Angerer, Marie-Luise; Bösel, Bernd (2016)
Through the emergence of affect- and psychotechnologies, especially with the advent of affective computing, the recognition, regulation and production of affects have been automatised to an unforeseeable degree. The roots of this algorithmic automation can be seen in the propagation of cybernetic models in the field of psychology from the 1950s onwards. A direct genealogical line leads from Silvan Tomkins’ affect system via Paul Ekman’s facial emotion recognition to Rosalind Picard’s conception and co-development of affectsensitive computer systems. Nevertheless, the implicated aspects of surveillance and collection of affective information have yet to be assessed critically. Such an assessment is outlined here.
Unhappy? There’s an App for That. Tracking Well-Being through the Quantified Self
Belli, Jill (2016)
This article analyses happiness apps, a subset of quantified self (QS) applications focused on tracking and improving user subjective well-being or happiness. I examine these apps, the data they track, and the interventions they propose to explore the social, political, and ethical implications of QS practices associated with happiness apps. Despite their focus on science, data, and quantification, happiness apps are ideologically inflected, mediated through the influential research, rhetoric, and pedagogy of positive psychology. Positive psychology as the “science of happiness” applies research in order to maximise well-being globally, and it increasingly leverages technology for this goal. Through a close reading of the claims and functions of these happiness apps, I highlight their assumptions about the happy individual and good society. Happiness apps do not assess emotions objectively via user data; instead, they filter user emotions through positive psychology’s theories of happiness that inform these apps’ conceptions and standards of well-being. This article argues that happiness apps may function conservatively, teaching users to pursue happiness and the good life without recognizing that understandings of happy and good are not universal but inextricably bound to particular ideological assumptions, cultural contexts, and interpretations of what is positive, valuable, and desirable. The practice of tracking and operationalising user data via a happiness app is a complex, mediated practice. The data are mediated by the particular tool as well as users’ individual understandings of and aspirations for happiness, which in turn are mediated by the rhetoric, ideology, and pedagogy of positive psychology. This triple mediation demonstrates that the QS is not neutral but instead embedded within social, cultural, economic, political, and ethical commitments.

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