Book tips - Self measurement
Wearables
What has been good for top-level sports for many years can't be bad for Otto Breitensportler today, and it may also help Karin Couchpotato to get active: permanent self-measurement and the further processing of physiological and other personal data by IT-supported systems. When the two US Americans Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly founded the Quantified Self movement ten years ago, they were initially ignored, then ridiculed as nerds. Today, digital self-measurement has become a mass phenomenon. And you don't have to be an obsessive hypochondriac to acknowledge that Big Data records can make an important contribution to the medication of the chronically ill. As with other blessings of modern mass data processing, critical questions about data protection must be asked and answered.
" I am physically and physically in top shape. " -Thomas Häßle
Source: E-3 Magazine - February 2017 issue
Live better with high-tech!
Quantified Self is becoming mainstream: After the smartphone, the next big technology wave is rolling toward us in the form of wearables. The first representatives of this new type of device are coming into our lives as smartwatches or fitness bracelets, and they bring with them a central promise: By measuring our own lives, each of us can become a better person. Fitter, more focused and more successful through the use of technology? In fact, the ongoing feedback of one's own (in)activity or the comparison with other users can help defeat the inner bastard.
Lifelogging
The digital self-measurement and life logging of people has become a socially relevant topic. The spectrum ranges from sleep and mood, sex and work, to thing and death logging. But how do we live in a society of data? Is the measured person automatically an improved person? And if so, what price do they pay for it? Does lifelogging give rise to new categories of reality or a new principle of social order?
Life by numbers
What changes when self-knowledge becomes a digital product? Whether calories, steps, blood or mood values: mobile devices worn on the body measure, monitor and coach everyday behavior and physical performance. The technically mediated exploration, control and optimization of the self. Self-tracking not only establishes new relationships between the body, technology and knowledge, but also blurs the boundary between self-management and management by others.
Descartes' dream
In the 17th century, René Descartes steered the world on a rationalization course whose stations would soon exceed his wildest dreams. Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh retrace this route, asking important questions: How is the computerization of the world affecting the material and intellectual building blocks of our civilization? How is the computer changing our notions of reality, knowledge, and time? Has it actually made our lives easier?
Culture of digitality
Referentiality, communality and algorithmicity are forms of the culture of digitality in which more and more people (have to) participate. In this way, they respond to the challenges of a chaotic, overflowing information sphere and contribute to its further spread. This is causing old cultural orders to collapse and new ones are already clearly discernible. Felix Stalder illuminates the historical roots and consequences of this development.
