A column by Olivia Judson in today’s New York Times touches on both scientific and literary testimony about the self-blindness of human beings. In “Wanted: Intelligent Aliens, for a Research Project,” Judson points out that we are terrible self-analyzers, at least using the tools of our ordinary understanding and perception. If there is anything living…
As a break from working through some of the heavy papers on mood metrics that I asked for and received, I started playing with Daytum, the place to make pretty, web-based charts from your data. Daytum is in an invite-only beta right now, but they are issuing invitations to all who ask as their capacity…
This is a quick post to request help/references. I’ve decided to add an emotional dimension to my self-measurement experiments. I’m currently measuring mood on a 1-5 scale. There is a lot of social science research on measuring mood. I’ll post some pointers in the next few days. But if others are measuring mood I’d be…
The blog for self-trackers, self-surveillance, and self-knowledge also known as The Quantified Self, now has comments turned on. Your hosts are Gary Wolf and myself. We welcome your response and feedback to any posting. You need to click on the red “Actions” button at the end of a post to get to the comment link….
Lately I’ve been obsessed with a hard problem that seems easy. You do things that generate data. You have a machine that measures something and produces a number. Sometimes the machine even stores the numbers, so you can look at old measurements. Maybe, if the company is very advanced, the machine will bounce the numbers…
The same ubiquitous traces that make it easier for us to track ourselves make it easier for other people to track us. So we always take an interest in stories of accidental self-exposure. Here, without too much comment, is a link to today’s notable incident. It comes from the world of GPS tracking; specifically, from…
“Nike +” is the monitoring system embedded into specific Nike shoes which allow you to record data about your runs. In one version (not the Sports Band) the system transmits this information to your iPod, and soon to your iPhone. Apple has filed patents for improving the system. According to Engadget which publicized the filed…
Yesterday I wrote about the inaugural QS Show&Tell, where the very first show-and-teller, Ka-Ping Yee, stood up and explained that he had been tracking most of his activities over the last three years. (I didn’t want to use his name or link to his entry until I asked permission, which he quickly granted.) Below is…
On September 10, 2008, twenty-eight people interested in collecting all kinds of data about themselves held the first QS Show&Tell in Pacifica, California. Even before the meeting started, it attracted some good-natured ridicule in the Washington Post. People tracking their most mundane activities? Why? It’s a reasonable question. One of the most interesting things I…
A quick overview of the emerging culture of self-tracking ran in the Washington Post the other day. Called “Bytes of Life: For Every Move, Mood and Bodily Function, There’s a Web Site to Help You Keep Track.” The subtitle is a gross exaggeration, although in time it will be true. Right now there are a…
Yesterday was a red letter day in the world of self-quantification, as Nathan Yau declared the winner in his summer-long personal data visualization context. The winner is Tim Graham, whose data blog is an entertaining record of personal data that shows how much narrative (courage, hope, risk, disappointment) can be packed into a single graph….
Next Wednesday, September 10, dedicated quantified selfers in the Bay Area will meet at my studio for the second Bay Area show and tell. For an explanation of “the quantified self” check my blog The Quantified Self. In brief, the big idea is to use any measurement to bring about self-understanding and self-betterment. So we…
This week I set out to buy a scale. My requirements were simple: I wanted a home scale accurate to within .25 pounds that had Bluetooth or a USB port so that I could transmit data to my computer. It didn’t turn out to be so easy. Here is a brief report about my quest….
From [Ethan Zuckerman’s](http://ethanzuckerman.com/) always interesting blog, [My heart’s in Accra](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/), comes [this story](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/29/social-lions-fiscally-literate-mobile-phones/) of a prototype of a social tracking device that helps teenagers notice patterns in their social behavior – and also alerts their counselors: Ennea, a project from students at the Eindhoven University of Technology is one of the cooler things I’ve seen…
Last Tuesday 23andMe, the genome sequencing service, hosted the first meeting between its customers. Like Navigenics and deCode, 23andMe will sequence half a million “snips” from your own DNA to give you glimpse of your personal genetics. What you get for your $1,000 payment is lots of numbers and strings of letters, and a little…
The art of constant self-awareness and self-experimentation is essential to the habit of self-metrics. Occasionally a trained scientist can take a small signal from their own life and turn it into a falsifiable result. I found the following note of such self-observation on the website for The People’s Pharmacy. This center for patient submitted alternative…
The Quantified Self is primarily about self-monitoring, and not about monitoring others. But your baby is close to the self, so there may be some technology in baby monitoring to be of use to adults. Trixie Tracker tracks and displays the activity patterns of babies. As they claim on their website: “Uncover patterns in your…
I’m becoming a devoted fan of Seth Roberts, one of the great champion of self-experimentation. Roberts, an emeritus professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has spent many year studying himself, and, even better, offering many practical clues about how to construct your own “experiments of one.” I first found out about his work in the…
A post discussing the role of home monitoring systems in the future of long term care for the elderly.
Ann Turner, co-author of the best book on DNA-based genealogy: Trace Your Roots With DNA, wrote me to say that she too has been comparing results from the two big genetic test companies, 23andMe and deCode. She wrote in response to my earlier posting comparing results between the two vendors. The big news is that…
