IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 27
"A dashboard for your body" [38], and self-trackers
are often described as "body hacking" or as "bio hackers." According to a Financial Times [U.K.] report
[40], "Your body is the ultimate computer," while The
Guardian [41] contends that "Your body isn't a temple,
it's a data factory emitting digital exhaust."
Self-trackers are also positioned as scientists who
are experimenting on their own bodies in their own
best interests. references were made regularly in news
article to quantified selfers as "body experimenters"
or "their own lab rats" or "guinea pigs." Quantifying
the self is "the science of the self," as Metro Beijing's
headline puts it [42], involving people "turning their
bodies into medical labs" [43]. As the American Newsweek International [44] describes one self-tracker, he
is attempting "to understand the human machine with
a dose of science and a whole lot of data crunching."
The metaphor of the body as machine has a long history in western culture [12]. This metaphor changes as
the technologies that dominate in historical eras change.
At the time of the industrial revolution, for example, the
human body was frequently portrayed as an engine, with
pistons and pumps. with the advent of computer technologies, the body has often been represented as part of
a digital information system, subject to communication
errors causing illness and disease [12], [13]. Some writers on the quantified self have extended the metaphor of
the body-machine by portraying self-tracking devices as
producing knowledge about the self through technological "exosenses" that extend the body's sensory capabilities [9]. Using such technologies, humans are represented
as becoming yet one more node in the Internet of Things,
exchanging data not only with other humans but also
with objects and material environments [8], [14]. The
body in this discourse becomes positioned as a "smart
machine" interlinked to other "smart machines." Bodily
sensations become phenomena that are mediated and
augmented through machines, transformed into data and
then communicated back to the human user. This vision
of the body as augmented via self-tracking devices present a digital cyborg, in which such devices not only
become prosthetics of the body but extend the body into
a network with other bodies and with objects [14], [15].
Enticements of Data
Huge volumes of data are now generated on individuals as part of their everyday routines, often in ways of
which they are unaware as part of their routine transactions with digital technologies. The move towards
collecting data on oneself in an "n=1" experiment (or
collecting "small data") and valuing the insights these
data may bring is part of a general valorization of data
in wider society. Much is now made of the potential
of big data to support corporate and state interests by
collecting fine-grained details about individuals and
populations [16], [17].
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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wINTEr 2013
The discourse of the body as machine and as a
scientific object for objective experimentation and
measurement is also related to the statistical aspect
of the practice of self-tracking. Individuals' ability to
produce "numbers" measuring aspects of their lives is
integral to the quantified self approach. It is assumed
that the production of such hard/objective data is the
best way of assessing and representing the value of
one's life and that better "self-knowledge" will result,
as demonstrated in the Quantified Self website's tagline "self knowledge through numbers."
The advent of digital technologies able to assist in the
collection, measurement, computation, and display of
these numbers has also been important in promoting the
cause of the self-tracking movement. while people have
been able to monitor and measure aspects of their bodies
and selves using non-digital technologies for centuries,
mobile digital devices connected to the internet have
facilitated the ever more detailed measurement and monitoring of the body and everyday life in real time, and the
analysis, presentation and sharing of these data [4], [9].
when digital technologies are employed, the practice
of self-tracking appears even more scientific, because
computer devices, platforms, and algorithms are viewed,
like the numbers they generate, as neutral, apolitical,
unbiased, and more accurate than human perceptions
and judgments [16], [17]. For example the Quantified
Self movement co-founder Gary wolf was quoted in a
Washington Post article [45], as commenting that: "For
a certain type of person, data is the most important thing
you can trust. Certain people think a feeling of inner certainty is misleading." A self-tracker also interviewed for
this article agreed with this sentiment: "I want to understand the changes that are actually happening [in my
life], not just my perceptions of them." The author of this
news story goes on to assert that: "Computers don't lie.
People lie" [45].
From the beginning of discussions of the quantified self concept, therefore, the discourse of trusting
data over embodied knowledge, the machine over the
human, was evident. Data appeared to offer certainty,
while the body's perceptions were represented as
untrustworthy, inexact, inaccurately mediated through
human experience rather than being objective. In
these representations, technology and the data it produces becomes portrayed as offering unique insights
into the workings of the human body that individuals'
unmediated haptic (physical sensations) cannot [4],
[15]. Like other biometric technologies, self-tracking
devices are viewed as able to peer inside the body,
releasing its secrets (and possibly uncovering its lies).
Neoliberalism and Self-Responsibility
The often intensely individualistic focus of quantifying the self is worthy of note. when notions of health,
wellbeing, and productivity are produced via data
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