Abstract
In this chapter I examine the concepts and uses of data as they are expressed in representations of self-tracking (otherwise known as life logging, the quantified self or personal informatics).Self-tracking is not only a technology of the self, but it is also a data practice. Self-tracking may be further conceptualised as a data practice that produces data assemblages. Most recently and noticeably, detailed quantifiable data has become valorised above other forms of information about one’s life, health and wellbeing. I will discuss the valorisation of quantification as a self-tracking data practice, but I also go on to examine alternative data practices with which some people are experimenting as part of self-tracking strategies.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackerman, L. (2013). Mobile Health and Fitness Applications and Information Privacy. San Diego: Privacy Rights Clearing House.
Andersen, J. H., & Whyte, S. R. (2014). Measuring risk, managing values: health technology and subjectivity in Denmark. Anthropology & Medicine, 21(3), 265-76. doi:10.1080/13648470.2014.907022.
Andrejevic, M. (2013). Infoglut: How Too Much Information is Changing the Way We Think and Know. New York: Routledge.
Andrejevic, M. (2014). The big data divide. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1673-89.
Andrejevic, M., & Burdon, M. (2015). Defining the sensor society. Television & New Media, 16(1), 19-36. doi:10.1177/1527476414541552.
Anonymous (2014). Kicking tracking, no picnic. The Unquantified Self. http://unquantifiedself.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/kicking-tracking-no-picnic/. Accessed 06 Aug 2014.
Boam, E., & Webb, J. (2014). The qualified self: going beyond quantification. Design Mind. http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/the-qualified-self-going-beyond-quantification.html. Accessed 28 July 2014.
Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for Big Data: provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662-679. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878.
Carney, M. (2013). You are your data: the scary future of the quantified self movement. PandoDaily. http://pando.com/2013/05/20/you-are-your-data-the-scary-future-of-thequantified-self-movement/. Accessed 27 June 2014.
Coole, D. H., & Frost, S. (2010). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
Costea, B., Crump, N., & Amiridis, K. (2008). Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organizing. Human Relations, 61(5), 661-685. doi:10.1177/0018726708091763.
Coughlin, J. (2014). What health and finance can learn from the quantified self and each other. The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-f-coughlin/what-healthfinance-can-learn-from-each-other_b_5774810.html. Accessed 04 Nov 2014.
Crawford, K., & Schultz, J. (2014). Big data and due process: toward a framework to redress predictive privacy harms. Boston College Law Review, 55(1), 93-128.
Dalton, C., & Thatcher, J. (2014). What does a critical data studies look like, and why do we care? Seven points for a critical approach to ‘big data’. Society and Space. http://societyandspace.com/material/commentaries/craig-dalton-and-jim-thatcher-what-does-a-critical-data-studies-look-like-and-why-do-we-care-seven-points-for-a-critical-approach-to-big-data/. Accessed 03 Nov 2014.
Davis, J. (2013). The qualified self. Cyborgology. http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/03/13/the-qualified-self/. Accessed 11 Aug 2013.
Dewey-Hagborg, H. (2014). A Day in the Life http://deweyhagborg.com/day_in_the_life/. Accessed 05 May 2015.
Dumbill, E. (2013). Making sense of big data. Big Data, 1(1), 1-2. doi:10.1089/big.2012.1503.
Dwoskin, E. (2014). Give me back my online privacy. Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304704504579432823496404570?mod=ITP_journalreport_0&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304704504579432823496404570.html%3Fmod%3DITP_journalreport_0. Accessed 25 March 2014.
Gitelman, L., & Jackson, V. (2013). Introduction. In L. Gitelman (ed.), “Raw Data” is an Oxymoron (pp. 1-14). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hartzog, W., & Selinger, E. (2013). The chilling implications of democratizing big data: Facebook graph search is only the beginning. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/privacynotice/2013/10/16/the-chilling-implications-of-democratizing-big-data-facebookgraph-search-is-only-the-beginning/. Accessed 17 Oct 2013.
Harvey, P., & Knox, H. (2014). Objects and materials: an introduction. In P. Harvey, E. C. Casella, G. Evans, H. Knox, C. McLean, E. B. Silva, N. Thoburn, K. Woodward (Eds.), Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion (pp. 1-17). London: Routledge.
Helles, R., & Jensen, K. B. (2013). Making data—big data and beyond: Introduction to the special issue. First Monday, 18(10). doi:10.5210/fm.v18i10.4860.
Hogue, R. (2014). Myquantifiedself #medx. Rebecca J Hogue. http://rjh.goingeast.ca/2014/11/05/my-quantified-self-medx/. Accessed 11 Nov 2014.
Khot, R., Hjorth, L., & Mueller, F. F. (2014). Understanding physical activity through 3D printed material artifacts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3835-44). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/2556288.2557144.
Khot, R., Mueller, F., & Hjorth, L. (2013). SweatAtoms: materializing physical activity. In Proceedings of the 9th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Matters of Life and Death (pp. 1-7). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/2513002.2513014.
Kitchin, R. (2014a). The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences. London: Sage.
Kitchin, R. (2014b). Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 1-12. doi:10.1177/2053951714528481.
Li, I., Dey, A. K., & Forlizzi, J. (2011). Understanding my data, myself: supporting self-reflection with ubicomp technologies. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 405-414). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/2030112.2030166.
Lupton, D. (2012). M-health and health promotion: the digital cyborg and surveillance society. Social Theory&Health, 10(3),229-44. doi:10.1057/sth.2012.6.
Lupton, D. (2013a). Quantifying the body: monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies. Critical Public Health, 23(4), 393-403. doi:10.1080/09581596.2013.794931.
Lupton, D. (2013b). Understanding the human machine. IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, 32(4), 25-30. doi:10.1109/MTS.2013.2286431.
Lupton, D. (2014a). Self-tracking modes: reflexive self-monitoring and data practices. Social Science Research Network. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2483549. Accessed 27 Aug 2014.
Lupton, D. (2014b). Self-tracking cultures: towards a sociology of personal analytics. In Proceedings of the 26 th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design (pp. 77-86). New York: ACM.
Lupton, D. (2015). Digital Sociology. London: Routledge.
Lyon, D. (2014). Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique. Big Data & Society, 1(2), 1-13. doi:10.1177/2053951714541861.
Madden, M. (2014). Public perceptions of privacy and security in the post-Snowden era.Pew Research Internet Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/12/public-privacy-perceptions/#. Accessed 20 Nov 2014.
Magid, L. (2014). Safety, security and privacy risks of fitness tracking and ‘quantifiedself’. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2014/07/31/safety-security-and-privacy-risks-of-fitness-tracking-and-quantified-self/. Accessed 04 Nov 2014.
Mandel, E. (2014). The Jawbone Blog. https://jawbone.com/blog/napa-earthquake-effecton-sleep/. Accessed 31 Aug 2014.
McClusky, M. (2009). The Nike experiment: how the shoe giant unleashed the power of personal metrics. Wired. http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_nike. Accessed 03 Sept 2014.
Miller, D. (2008). The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Montini, L. (2013). Susannah Fox Q&A on Pew’s latest health tracking report. Health 2.0 News. http://www.health2con.com/news/2013/01/30/susannah-fox-tracking/. Accessed 20 Aug 2014.
Nafus, D., & Sherman, J. (2014). This one does not go up to 11: the Quantified Self movement as an alternative big data practice. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1785-94.
Pantzar, M., & Ruckenstein, M. (2015). The heart of everyday analytics: emotional, material and practical extensions in self-tracking market. Consumption Markets & Culture, 18(1), 92-109. doi:10.1080/10253866.2014.899213.
Polonetsky, J., & Tene, O. (2013). Privacy and big data: making ends meet. Standford Law Review Online. http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-and-big-data/privacy-and-big-data. Accessed 04 Sept 2013.
Rozenzweig, P. (2012). Whither privacy?. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 344-47.
Ruckenstein, M. (2014). Visualized and interacted life: personal analytics and engagements with data doubles. Societies, 4(1), 68-84. doi:10.3390/soc4010068.
Tene, O., & Polonetsky, J. (2013). A theory of creepy: technology, privacy and shifting social norms. Yale Journal of Law & Technology, 16, 59-134.
The Wellcome Trust (2013). Summary Report of Qualitative Research into Public Attitudes to Personal Data and Linking Personal Data: The Wellcome Trust. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Reports/Public-engagement/WTP053206.htm. Accessed 05 May 2015.
Wilt, B. (2014). In the city that we love. The Jawbone Blog. https://jawbone.com/blog/jawbone-up-data-by-city/?ClickID=caawpsleqpin4xkfeqviwsewkx7iklxfxksxkq. Accessed 31 Aug 2014.
Wolf, G. (2009). Know thyself: tracking every facet of life, from sleep to mood to pain, 24/7/365. Wired. http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_knowthyself. Accessed 12 Oct 2013.
Wolf, G. (2010). The data-driven life. The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed 22 Feb 2013.
Wolf, G. (2014). Access matters. Quantified Self. http://quantifiedself.com/page/5/. Accessed 04 Sept 2014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lupton, D. (2016). You are Your Data: Self-Tracking Practices and Concepts of Data. In: Selke, S. (eds) Lifelogging. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13137-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13137-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-13136-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-13137-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)