Before starting her morning jog, Melissa makes sure activate RunKeeper in her iPhone. The app will, undetectable, record a plethora of data –from speed and heart rate to location and elevation- that will then be automatically uploaded onto a website where Melissa stores her personal information. Back at home, when Melissa logs in, she can see that her times have been steady for the last month, that she was slower than usual in the last climb and that she still ranks first amongst her friends for most miles in October. Like Melissa, many self-trackers seek to objectify their existential realities. . Users demonstrated a variety of reasons: some seek to improve and optimize their performance (eg. sports), others aim to maintain a particular state
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quit smoking, drinking, procrastinating.) . They seek to discover. They seek to experience. They seek to know. Reflexive, these activities are however not always synonymous with self-knowledge or increased capacity for action, reflecting mainly a tendency to regard the "self" as an absolute value and an autonomous entity. In other words, they sometimes just seek to say so. The technologization of even the most common practices in our life has allowed the practices of self-tracking, self-production and self-disclosure to intensify and expand its presence. This close monitoring of the self – from a Foucauldian perspective, akin to a new form of "self-cultivation"- allows individuals to gather objective, detailed data about their habits and activities, like sleeping or running. It’s promoters see …show more content…
Self-tracking is based on a a reflexive activity aimed at the self; it 's about allowing our existence to be scrutinized; indeed making our existence objective or what Foucault referred to as a “return to [the truth of] the self” by providing importance to the trivial, the insignificant, the ‘already known’ of daily living (Foucault, 2005). Just as F.W. Taylor used the motion studies of Frank and Lilian Gilbreth to leverage even the smallest details and motions to maximize and optimize productivity, self-trackers indicate that the quantification of their activities allowed them to make significant adjustments to their behavior and improve their autonomy or well-being. However, if one can judge these quantified forms of care of the self as a sign of new ways of enabling self-cultivation, that is to say, new forms of intensification of relations to oneself that allow the subject to enjoy itself, as something that is both in its possession and under its close watch. But this reflexive enjoyment is not provided free of contradictory trends: what enhances the subject in this egotistical and utilitarian tendency, sometimes leading to lessening the limits of logic itself as the idea of asubject that is free to make its own decisions is replaced by conceptualizing the self as a subject whose identity stems from overrriding power
quit smoking, drinking, procrastinating.) . They seek to discover. They seek to experience. They seek to know. Reflexive, these activities are however not always synonymous with self-knowledge or increased capacity for action, reflecting mainly a tendency to regard the "self" as an absolute value and an autonomous entity. In other words, they sometimes just seek to say so. The technologization of even the most common practices in our life has allowed the practices of self-tracking, self-production and self-disclosure to intensify and expand its presence. This close monitoring of the self – from a Foucauldian perspective, akin to a new form of "self-cultivation"- allows individuals to gather objective, detailed data about their habits and activities, like sleeping or running. It’s promoters see …show more content…
Self-tracking is based on a a reflexive activity aimed at the self; it 's about allowing our existence to be scrutinized; indeed making our existence objective or what Foucault referred to as a “return to [the truth of] the self” by providing importance to the trivial, the insignificant, the ‘already known’ of daily living (Foucault, 2005). Just as F.W. Taylor used the motion studies of Frank and Lilian Gilbreth to leverage even the smallest details and motions to maximize and optimize productivity, self-trackers indicate that the quantification of their activities allowed them to make significant adjustments to their behavior and improve their autonomy or well-being. However, if one can judge these quantified forms of care of the self as a sign of new ways of enabling self-cultivation, that is to say, new forms of intensification of relations to oneself that allow the subject to enjoy itself, as something that is both in its possession and under its close watch. But this reflexive enjoyment is not provided free of contradictory trends: what enhances the subject in this egotistical and utilitarian tendency, sometimes leading to lessening the limits of logic itself as the idea of asubject that is free to make its own decisions is replaced by conceptualizing the self as a subject whose identity stems from overrriding power