2(1) 2016: Quantified Selves

Browsing 2(1) 2016: Quantified Selves by Subject "ddc:613"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Article
    From Quantified to Qualified Self. A Fictional Dialogue at the Mall
    Belliger, Andréa; Krieger, David J. (2016) , S. 25-40
    Quantifying the self is not enough; numbers and statistics must be interpreted, that is, integrated into networks of identity, society, and meaning. The quantified self must become a “qualified” self if body tracking is to have any impact on our lives and society. Data generated by body tracking in all forms are not merely a passive material for interpretation, they do not merely lie around in databases until something from outside makes meaning out of them. Data become information and flow in global networks. Without access to data, individuals must rely on experts and expert systems. Putting body-related data into the hands of those who are directly concerned makes them responsible for doing something with the data, for interpreting and making use of the data. Interpreting the data of body tracking occurs as networking. It breaks out of the constraints of modern subjectivity as well as paternalistic health care structures and occurs by participation, communication, and transparency, that is, by following “network norms.” Personal informatics and body tracking is a performative enactment of the informational self. The informational self is neither the product of technologies of power (Foucault), but of an “ethical” technology of the self. The self becomes a hub and an agent in the digital network society. Body tracking transforms the opaque and passive body of the pre-digital age into the informational self. Networking is the way in which order – personal, social, and ontological – is constructed in the digital age.
  • Article
    Unhappy? There’s an App for That. Tracking Well-Being through the Quantified Self
    Belli, Jill (2016) , S. 89-103
    This article analyses happiness apps, a subset of quantified self (QS) applications focused on tracking and improving user subjective well-being or happiness. I examine these apps, the data they track, and the interventions they propose to explore the social, political, and ethical implications of QS practices associated with happiness apps. Despite their focus on science, data, and quantification, happiness apps are ideologically inflected, mediated through the influential research, rhetoric, and pedagogy of positive psychology. Positive psychology as the “science of happiness” applies research in order to maximise well-being globally, and it increasingly leverages technology for this goal. Through a close reading of the claims and functions of these happiness apps, I highlight their assumptions about the happy individual and good society. Happiness apps do not assess emotions objectively via user data; instead, they filter user emotions through positive psychology’s theories of happiness that inform these apps’ conceptions and standards of well-being. This article argues that happiness apps may function conservatively, teaching users to pursue happiness and the good life without recognizing that understandings of happy and good are not universal but inextricably bound to particular ideological assumptions, cultural contexts, and interpretations of what is positive, valuable, and desirable. The practice of tracking and operationalising user data via a happiness app is a complex, mediated practice. The data are mediated by the particular tool as well as users’ individual understandings of and aspirations for happiness, which in turn are mediated by the rhetoric, ideology, and pedagogy of positive psychology. This triple mediation demonstrates that the QS is not neutral but instead embedded within social, cultural, economic, political, and ethical commitments.