MEDIA ARTS: Exploring the ‘Quantified Self’
By Saima Uddin
What is a quantified self? Discuss how this concept manifests in relation to personal wellbeing, labour, and social relations.
This essay will explore the quantified self and the way in which current technologies have encouraged individuals to transform their personal well-being into a statistical measure, as well as the implications of the quantified self, regarding personal wellbeing, the healthcare industry and social relationships. The ‘quantified self’ was first used by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelley, both former editors at Wired magazine, who defined the concept as ‘self-knowledge through numbers’ (Wired, 2009). Self-tracking is a practice of those who utilise the quantified self, and can be defined as the ‘recording of information to understand one’s behaviour’ (Figueiredo, 2017). Self-tracking is often used to understand a plethora of health-related queries, through the use of digital technologies, varying from smartphones to smart watches. As technology advances, digital platforms practising self-tracking have become prevalent, with digital technologies enabling individuals to develop and look into their quantified self. With ideas of self-actualisation and the gamification of the quantified self underpinning self-tracking apps, this essay will consider how users are encouraged to engage with and maintain activity on such applications, as they relay their intentions of improving themselves. In addition to this, as digital storage becomes vastly accessible, the community of those interested in self-tracking have the capability to contribute, compare and analyse data from fellow members. This essay will also consider the evolution of the self-tracking community, and how this phenomenon is rapidly growing into its own participatory science. Particular focus will be given to the way in which digital technologies, such as smartphones and smart watches, and the applications found within, are driving individuals towards the management of their lifestyles online, rather than in the real-world.
One theory that we can use to understand the presence of the quantified self is Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation. Abraham Maslow was a humanistic psychologist who explained that ‘the self-actualising people are very healthy people, psychiatrically and psychologically healthy people. They could be called a superior segment of the population’ (1973: 4-5). Self-actualisation can be defined as an individual’s ability to fulfil their potential, which can be managed through their behaviours and lifestyle. Maslow’s theory also included a concept which he named the hierarchy of needs, a five-layer pyramid structure used to measure one’s personal growth; the hierarchy of needs can be used to indicate the proximity between one’s current state to one’s actualised state. Maslow explained the importance of physical necessities, such as food, shelter, and water, to be the foundation of this pyramid which gradually contribute to self-actualisation. In addition to this, Maslow highlighted that the hierarchy of needs to include levels for psychological factors such as interpersonal relations, love, individuality, selflessness, and self-fulfilment. The higher the quality of these hierarchal needs in one’s life, the closer one is to self-actualising, as their immediate environment provides a basis for psychological growth. The theory of self-actualisation demonstrates an individualistic desire to improve oneself using forms of measure, such as a person’s employment or their friendships.
It can be argued that individuals who believe in the quantified self are working towards an actualised state, within a gamified context. As humans, we tend to aspire towards portraying the best version of ourselves to others. Jennifer Whitson, the author of ‘Gaming the Quantified Self’, explains that ‘the desire to level up and win inculcate desirable skill sets and behaviours within the self’ (Whitson 2013, 163); this is useful to explain why digital applications which promote growth are becoming popular amongst those invested in the quantified self. This is due to such applications providing individuals with the fundamentals for physical and psychological growth, which can then be used to improve themselves. The essence of the quantified self is to gain information on and track one’s behaviours in order to understand and improve the self. Therefore, we can acknowledge that the quantified self is a gamified version of the self, where our wellbeing and attitude to our habits and lifestyles begin to improve, as a result of allocating goals and objectives to understand such concepts.
Much of the self-tracking community have taken it upon themselves to analyse and obtain their own personal data. In Eli Ricker’s article ‘Tracking What I Do Versus What I Say I'll Do’, Ricker discusses her own self-tracking ‘Life Satisfaction’ score; an intricately structured digital spreadsheet which studied both Ricker’s personal and professional life, and the various activities adopted across over a decade. When Ricker implemented her own metric for measuring her satisfaction in these domains, she used percentages which conflated to a degree of self-accomplishment. Ricker described these goals to be ‘accountability promises’ (2021: 1), used as a baseline for the way in which she decided to navigate her life. Ricker further explained, ‘for every category in your life, your relationships, your career, your money - you look at what your ideal state would be, and then what you are failing in that category would look like’ (2021: 2). This strongly resonates with themes of self-actualisation, as Ricker visualised the best potential version of herself, and judged her daily habits in accordance with whether or not she was moving closer to this state. This clearly demonstrates Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation to be the root of the quantified self, useful in helping us understand how the quantified self is evolving and becoming relevant to different aspects of our lives, including personal wellbeing and our mindset towards work.
Many tech companies have implemented features within their applications where personal well-being is perceived to be their focus, when in reality our information is being used a source for information regarding healthcare. What started off as simple applications that built the foundations of early smartphone models, such as the digital alarm, notes, and reminders, have evolved into a practise of digital mindfulness, redefining how we utilise digital technologies, such as the smartphone. Such devices have the capacity to gain insight towards our physical and mental health through our activity, which is then referred to and later organised into a summary of our behaviours; digital devices now have the ability to cultivate our own health, through the presentation of our data and notifications such as to sleep early tonight, go on a walk, or even to drink a glass of water. The Fitbit is a form of wearable technology made with the intention to manage and support the wearer’s health. ‘Wearable technology holds great potential for moving us from ‘sousveillance‘ towards the concept of online surveillance’ (Karanasiou, 2016). ‘Sousveillance’ is used to emphasise the importance of the individual in self-tracking, however it can be argued that we are now entering a time where community-based tracking is proving to be more insightful.
When magnifying lenses were invented, they were aimed at the cosmos. But almost immediately we turned them and aimed them at ourselves. The telescope became a microscope. But the notion of a personal microscope isn't quite right, because insight will come not just from our own numbers but from combining them with the findings of others. Really, what we're building is a macroscope. (Wired, 2009).
Despite self-tracking adopting an individualistic approach to understanding and analysing personalities, the idea of the quantified self truly thrives off a collaborative and collective approach. The idea of the macroscope originated from Jesse Ausubo, an environmental scientist and ecology researcher, who proposed the quantified self and the concept of self-tracking to be an advancement from individual data fragments to a large-scale pattern. The ‘macroscope’ can be useful to consider how the self-tracking and the quantified self are not separate, individualistic entities. Self-tracking is only meaningful when there are other data sets to compare and analyse ours with, so the quantified self is not just about one’s own personal wellbeing, rather about how one’s personal wellbeing differs to others. This in turn means that the quantified self is no longer an individualistic concept, rather a way in which we behave as a society. Furthermore, it has been predicted that ‘over 20% of healthcare diagnostics by volume will involve quantified-self solutions by 2026’ (Sharan, 2021). The quantified self is not only affecting the individual, but a generation of individuals, and how they perceive themselves. There is now a community of self-trackers dominating research into the quantified self, who are also contributing to the development of the phenomenon as a participatory science. This is useful to acknowledge when considering how self-tracking technologies are beginning to be used in institutions, such as the workplace.
Self-tracking technologies are now being used within the workplace, and are beginning to change how employers manage their workers. It has been found that Amazon and Tesco warehouses use wearable arm technologies to monitor the performance of workers who are employed on a zero-hour contract, described to be ‘a streamlined replacement for the clipboard’ (Moore, 2015). This evidently shows a way in which the quantified self is evolving into a tool of measurement for others to gain an insight to our own behaviour, rather than a personal account of one’s progress. Wearable technology in the workplace serves to dehumanise individuals, reducing workers to their labour, such as the number of hours that they have worked in a shift. It also encourages a new level of close surveillance, which is not always as beneficial and progressive, or appropriate to be in use. Self-tracking technologies used in the workplace have a lack of consideration towards the subjectivity of the worker; each worker is an individual with assorted strengths and weaknesses, so it is not entirely fair to use technology which limits their performance to fixed categories, in order to manage their activity. In an article written by Nirit Cohen, the founder of WorkFutures, an organisation focused on improving the workplace environment, Cohen reports on the issue of tracking employers. Cohen wrote about a time when an employer showed her a graph that recorded the number of days each employee came into the office, on their allocated days. The employer was disappointed that some workers were attending on the incorrect days, or not even attending at all and instead working from home. Cohen emphasises the need to ‘re-write how we measure organizational health rather than attendance (…) to switch from measuring traditional employee attrition and retention rates and design new metrics to reflect managerial and organizational flexibility‘ (Cohen, 2022). If performance in the workplace continues to be quantified, employers risk deterring employees, as they may reduce their capabilities to factors such as attendance or hours worked.
‘Technologies are now a part – is identical with humanity – an outer limit of ‘human nature’’ (Moore, 2015). Smartphones are gradually evolving into a division of our minds, as self-tracking encourages us to consolidate our health, using the averages, graphs and data presented to us, at the convenience of a click. A key example of this is the rise of mindfulness applications such as Calm and Headspace, which present individuals with a form of digital self-help, perceived to be easier and just as effective as actively attending an in-person meditation class. This evidently explains the proliferation of self-tracking in the current digital age. As we continue to immerse ourselves into the digital world, individuals will come to find self-tracking and the quantified self to be a significantly easier way of managing their lifestyles. This presents self-trackers an opportunity to adopt digital control over their own behaviours and habits, in comparison to confronting these matters in person. Although we may believe that our smartphones can be beneficial to our personal wellbeing, this may not be true for most individuals.
On the other hand, digital platforms, such as social media, also have the power to affect our personal wellbeing and social relations. Social media carries a significant role in this newfound science, instigating the shift of real-world interactions to friendships and communications that are maintained digitally. Consumers of social media provide tech companies with an insight into their personality and psychometrics. This is then utilised to delegate behaviour predicting algorithms, evident in applications which provide users with suggestions based off their activity. Not only does this encourage consumers of social media to scroll for longer, but relationships begin to exist only in the online space. We become comfortable with communicating through digital platforms, as they seem to be a safe space where we can control our interactions with others through elements such as through the use of features such as the follow button or through accepting invitations. Features on social media applications, such as direct messaging on Instagram, and posting to stories on Snapchat begin to be the only medium in which we communicate with others. Social media is useful for the quantified self but in some ways, can also negatively affect the self-tracker. Recent additions of the ‘Screen Time’ app provide smartphone and social media users with a detailed report on their online activity. This not only adds to the mass of statistical information we can gather on ourselves using technology for the quantified self, but can also cause psychological harm. If a person is constantly tracking their social media usage, they may feel overwhelmed by the amount of time they have spent online and experience a sense of helplessness about their free time. There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not children should have a fixed amount of screen time; it has been argued that screen time contributes to learning and development. In the book The Art of Screen Time, Anya Kamenetz advocates, ‘support young people if they actually focus on concerns they may have, rather than the screens.‘ (Kamenetz, 2018). As children learn at different paces, limiting their time online may restrict them. This makes it more difficult for parents to make the decision for what is most appropriate for their child, demonstrating a negative of the quantified self. Again, this is also evidence of how the quantified self provides a limited insight into our behaviours, as it overlooks the variability of our lifestyles and does not acknowledge our needs and preferences.
Furthermore, the implications of consistent social media consumption have been found to be detrimental. Social media, serves as a key example of digital platforms in which we liberally provide tech companies with our information, making ourselves susceptible to manipulation through our feeds and online activity. In a way, this can serve as a form of self-tracking, as we are using technology to manage and filter our social relations. Current day social media platforms now provide consumers with content relating to a myriad of habits which self-trackers may be interested in tracking. News feeds, fitness pages, nutritional health tips and mindfulness practises are embedded within most social media platforms. This makes it easier to manage our behaviours regarding these topics, as our online activity is automatically tracked. Algorithms feed off consumer data and begin to analyse our psychometrics and predict our behaviours. This results in the production of curated feeds, which in turn have the power to affect personal wellbeing and our desire to maintain relationships. A key example we can use to understand this concept is Facebook’s emotion experiment carried out in 2014. Facebook’s A/B marketing method was altered to test and analyse the differences between users shown prominently positive or negative feeds, measured through emotional language found within their status updates. Upon the release of the research, much of the public were disappointed and felt as though they had experienced an invasion of privacy. But most do not consider this algorithmic control to be constant. ’It shows how powerful ‘big data’ is, social platforms, governments can condition our feelings and emotions – without us even knowing’ (BBC, 2014). We now consume content that is not which we choose to consume, rather, content that has been predicted for us, perhaps as a result of their previous activity. ‘I’m sure those who would like to manipulate us are very interested in this research – the politician who wants to get people to vote a certain way, or the activist who wants to sway people to their cause’ (The Next Web, 2014). The quantified self has the power to change our viewpoints and opinions, simply as a result of altering the posts we view.
To conclude, smart technologies have greatly contributed to the development and the practise of the quantified self. Generations of people are now committing to the practise of self-tracking, and we head towards a direction where individuals will develop a sense of reliance towards such digital platforms, in order to consolidate their health and well-being. As big tech companies continue to implement application features which encourage us to provide data, perceived to be beneficial in bettering ourselves, we will find ourselves creating a connection between the physical self and the digital world, that is constant and co-dependent on one another. Not only have we begun to associate and define our physical selves with statistical data, but we are also now beginning to rely on technology to manage ourselves, our habits and lifestyles. The quantified self is present across most interactions we develop whether that be for personal, labouring or recreational benefits, as we progress into a society of close surveillance. In future, this poses a risk of dictating our well-being through our usage and contribution towards such applications, leading us in a direction where we can no longer detach ourselves from the digital devices which now control us.
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