2(1) 2016: Quantified Selves

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

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  • 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
    How Old am I? Digital Culture and Quantified Ageing
    Marshall, Barbara L.; Katz, Stephen (2016) , S. 145-152
    In previous work we argued that ageing bodies and changes across the life-course were becoming measured, standardised, and treated according to a new logic of functionality, supplanting traditional categories of normality (Katz/Marshall 2004). In particular, the binary between the ‘functional’ and the ‘dysfunctional’ has become a powerful tool in mapping and distributing bodies around datapoints, functional subsystems, and posthuman informatics. In this paper, we extend this line of analysis by exploring how current developments in self-tracking technologies and the proliferation of digital apps are creating new modes and styles of ‘quantified ageing’. In particular, we identify four interrelated fields for inquiry that are specifically relevant in setting out a research agenda on ageing quantified selves and statistical bodies: 1) ‘Wearables’ and mobile technologies, including both technologies designed for selfmonitoring/self-improvement (health, fitness, sleep, mood and so on) and those designed for surveillance of and ‘management’ of ageing individuals by children, caregivers or institutions. 2) Digital apps, including those that collect and connect data uploaded from wearable devices, and those that deploy various algorithms for ‘calculating’ age and its correlates. 3) The rhetorics of games and scores in age-related apps such as those used in digital ‘brain training’ games that track a person’s imagined cognitive plasticity and enhancement, while promising protection against memory loss and even dementia. 4) The political economy of data sharing, aggregation and surveillance of ageing populations. Conclusions ponder wider sociological questions; for example, how will the insurance industry acquire and use data from digital health technologies to produce new actuarial standards? How will older individuals plan their futures according to the risks assembled through quantifying technologies? We argue that the technical turn to new ways of quantifying and standardising measurements of age raises a range of complex and important questions about ageism, agency and inequality.