Alexandra Carmichael

December 17, 2011

Here are some juicy links to what we’re reading at QS Labs, from the minds of Gary, Alex, and Ernesto this week:

• Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers, by Cressida J. Hayes: Here’s an extended philosophical/academic exploration of one person’s experience in a popular commercial weight loss program. [PDF]
• FBI, here I am! by Hasan Elani: A story of a muslim artist who created a massive public self-tracking project in response to FBI questioning. [TED talk]
• Want A Piece Of Founders Fund’s Latest $625M Fund? Start By Trying To Change The World by Alexia Tsotsis: A piece that describes Founder’s Fund goal to invest in ideas that fundamentally improve human life.
• Uncommon Therapy: the Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson by Jay Haley. [book, recommended by two QS’ers at the recent QS Europe conference]
• Famed Investor Esther Dyson Knows How To Make Big Bucks About What’s Coming Next. So What’s Next? by Boonsri Dickinson: A discussion of Esther Dyson’s investments in the Quantified Self space.
• How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day by Rachel Aaron: The story of an author who used tracking to increase her productivity.
• Greg Beato’s piece on the Quantified Self in Reason: “We treat even our most mundane lunches as if they were corpses at a crime scene.”
• The Information Diet by Clay Johnson: Free first chapter of this new book, to be published in January, emphasizing conscious consumption of information.
• Recording Everything: Brookings report on the authoritarian consequences of tracking.
• Reading the Riots: The power of asking direct questions. “What did you do, Why did you do it?” Researchers interview hundreds charged in London riots.