Neff - Self-Tracking

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

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The Conscious Mind , Zoltan L. Torey

Crowdsourcing , Daren C. Brabham

Free Will , Mark Balaguer

Information and the Modern Corporation , James W. Cortada

Intellectual Property Strategy , John Palfrey

The Internet of Things , Samuel Greengard

Memes in Digital Culture , Limor Shifman

Metadata , Jeffrey Pomerantz

MOOCs , Jonathan Haber

Open Access , Peter Suber

Paradox , Margaret Cuonzo

Self-Tracking , Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus

Waves , Frederic Raichlen

Self-Tracking

Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus

2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Chaparral Pro by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Neff, Gina, 1971 author.

Title: Self-tracking / Neff, Gina, and Dawn Nafus.

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2016. | Series: The MIT Press

essential knowledge series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039937 | ISBN 9780262529129 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Patient self-monitoring. | Self-monitoring. | Self-care,

HealthTechnological innovations. | Medical telematics. | Medical

innovationsSocial aspects. | Information technologySocial aspects.

Classification: LCC RA418.5.M4 N44 2016 | DDC 610.285dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039937

ePub Version 1.0

d_r0

Series Foreword

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced pocket-size books on topics of current interest. Written by leading thinkers, the books in this series deliver expert overviews of subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

In todays era of instant information gratification, we have ready access to opinions, rationalizations, and superficial descriptions. Much harder to come by is the foundational knowledge that informs a principled understanding of the world. Essential Knowledge books fill that need. Synthesizing specialized subject matter for nonspecialists and engaging critical topics through fundamentals, each of these compact volumes offers readers a point of access to complex ideas.

Bruce Tidor

Professor of Biological Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Acknowledgments

One of the key points of this book is that knowledgeeven about the selfis a social product. So, too, of course, is this little book, which was made possible only through the contributions and efforts of many. While this book is a primer and not a work of ethnography, many people have been extraordinarily generous with their time, teaching us their perspective, sharing their views on data, and helping us understand what the stakes are. The dedication of patient advocates, data activists, and quantified-self enthusiasts inspires us with a view of what is possible when people get involved in the technologies that matter to them.

Margy Avery first encouraged us to think about how to communicate the issues of self-tracking for the general reader. Without her keen editorial instincts we would have never taken on this project. Susan Buckley and Gita Manaktala helped shape and guide it from sketchy proposal to the finished product. Kathleen Caruso once again proved to be an extraordinary manuscript editor seemingly capable of managing every possible contingency with grace and attention to detail, and the keen eye of copyeditor Julia Collins improved this book tremendously. Shannon ONeill and Will Lippincott at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin worked with us to clarify our ideas for the general audience and ensured that they made it into print. For that we are both exceedingly grateful.

We thank Brittany Fiore-Gartland, Kristen Barta, Chris Monson, and Peter Nagy for contributing vital research assistance for projects related to this work and for marshaling the gush of news media on the quantified self. This work has also benefited greatly from the generosity of anonymous peer reviewers whose investments of time and thought into our ideas strengthened this book and its argument.

Dawn would like to thank the many self-trackers whose experimentation has taught us so much. In particular, Anne Wright has been extremely clear, thoughtful, and helpful in showing what it takes to do self-tracking in ways that solve an actual problem. Rajiv Mehta has been inspiring to work with over the years. Steven Jonas expanded our imagination about the ways that self-reflection could happen through data, and the folks at QS Labs have provided incredibly stimulating, thoughtful, and usefully challenging conversations. Dawn would also like to thank her colleagues at Intel, and particularly the Data Sense teamSangita Sharma, Lama Nachman, Pete Denman, Rita Wouhaybi, Lenitra Durham, Evan Savage, Devon Strawn, and Tim Coppernoll. John Sherry contributed to this work as both lab leader and valued mentor. Jamie Sherman, Yuliya Grinberg, Dana Greenfield, Minna Ruckenstein, and Whitney Erin Boesel have shaped much of the thinking presented here. Jim and Penni Nafus provided the much deeper foundation on which this work has been based. Dan Jaffee deserves special thanks for his support during the troubling time through which this book was written. To the good friend who had the unfortunate task of having to point out what was right there and yet somehow so very difficult to see, Dawn extends her gratitude for this persons honesty and collaboration.

Gina would like to thank numerous colleagues who have helped clarify the ideas presented here, including discussions after talks at Princeton and Stanford. Colleagues at the School of Public Policy at Central European University and the incredible students there pushed the public implications of the quantified self to the fore. Her research on self-tracking and personal data was supported by Intel, the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University. The University of Washington Rome Center and the Raul Wallenberg Guesthouse in Budapest provided space to write the first draft of this book, and particular thanks go to va Gnczi, va Fodor, and gnes Forg. Phil Howard and our sons Hammer and Gordon make time spent writing possible, enjoyable, and worth the effort.

Finally, we both would like to thank readers for picking up this book, and we urge them to get involved in the issues at hand.

An Introduction to Self-Tracking

People now keep track. An array of numbers follows us through each day. Hours slept. Steps walked. Hours billed and minutes concentrated. People friended. Tweets sent. There is a veritable explosion of self-directed tracking. A whopping 110 million wearable sensors will be shipped by the end of 2016. Weekend athletes now race each other virtually, while office workers keep track of how much of their computer time is spent goofing off on social media and how many followers their posts reach. Homeowners keep track of how much energy each appliance uses, while glucose monitoring is no longer done just by diabetics. Why do so many people do these things?