In the annals of self-monitoring tools, here is one that monitors your computer time. It’s a fancy version of time management software. You assign certain tags for various functions and websites — say “surfing” for Digg, Reddit, or Popurls, or “research” for Wikipedia. After you label your activities once, then RescueTime will gather the stats…
I am taking a crash course in genetic literacy by having some of my genes sequenced by the two major genetic sequencing services, 23andMe and deCode. I am still in the process of comparing the two sets of results to see which vendor is better, but while coming up to speed in this new realm,…
Inspired by a French sociologist from the last century, a fellow tracked his family’s movements in their TV room for hone hour. He turned his pattern of their locations into a striking info-graphic of the result which he posted on his Flickr account. He says: I got the idea from a French Sociologist [de Lauwe]…
All of kinds of monitoring technology that may be undesirable when used by others can be useful when turned on ourselves for ourselves. Here is a prototype device currently being developed at Stanford that can be used to monitor behavior types. The researchers are using them for science projects, and as an aid for those…
I’ve been researching how to quantify the level of exotic, synthetic chemicals which all our bodies pick up while living in a manufactured world. All modern citizens carry around traces of chemicals we are exposed to and were not born with. A few years ago, this internal pollution was given the name Human Body Burden….
A lifelog, or lifeblog, is an attempt to fully document every second, every action, every interaction, every keystroke, every conversation of one’s life. In this sense it is quantitative as it accumulates data about a person’s daily activities. But among lifeloggers there is a subgroup of photo lifeloggers who are merely content to photographicly record…
Smack in the middle of the arena of self-surveillence is this tiny flash-stick-sized location tracker, the Trackstick. It is tiny. Gets lost in your coat pocket, or backpack. You carry it around wherever you go. Once a month you download its records from its built in USB port and plot your course on an online…
If you extend the mode of self-measurement to its extreme you get a state that approaches what Hasan Elahi calls “self-surveillence.” A few years ago Elahi, a new media artist, was stopped by the FBI in an airport after 9/11 and interviewed as a suspect. Of what he was never told. But the interrogation bugged…
As the Gene Sherpa rightly points out, a significant step in knowing yourself healthwise is to create a family health history. In most cases currently organizing the state of your ancestors health will be more informative than getting your genes sequenced. There’s even a federal initiative of the US Department of Health & Human Services…
Personal DNA sequencing is here. The New York Times has an excellent story by Amy Harmon on what happens when you get your own DNA sequenced. She had about half a million SNPs sequenced by 23andMe, a personal genome start up. In the article she explores both her hesitancies and exhilaration in discovering her genetic…
Steven Johnson, author of “The Ghost Map” and “Everything Bad is Good for You”, is the best textual naturalist I know. He has a remarkable talent for parsing literary forms in a fresh way. He was the first person to bring to my attention the sophisicated literary structure holding together modern TV serial dramas such…
Bruce McAllister (left) and Joe Marciano Jr. (right) help Randy Gardner stay awake as he gets a checkup at the naval hospital. What happens if you force your self to stay awake. Can you control your sleep? How long can you stay awake? Most of us have no idea what our own body/minds would do….
To be honest, while I am a huge fan of William Gibson, I don’t read much of him. Don’t read much fiction in general. But every conversation I have had with Gibson, and every time I have heard him speak, or read an interview with him, I have come away amazed and giddy. He’s among…
Health Vault is a new initiative from Microsoft that intends to be a solution for putting medical records “online” in a secure and practical way. So far it has gotten some good reviews from progressive doc blogs, such as Medical Quack, primarily because of the “secure” part of the equation. In fact Health Vault’s tagline…
People with particularly deadly forms of cancer can become desperate enough to self-experiment with non-approved drugs. Their ad hoc treatments can range in quality to random application or sometimes in concert with others trying the same thing, experiments with more value. New Scientist investigated a group of DCA self experimenters. In March 2007 they first…
