Our metrics, ourselves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device

Abstract

The recent proliferation of wearable self-tracking devices intended to regulate and measure the body has brought contingent questions of controlling, accessing and interpreting personal data. Given a socio-technical context in which individuals are no longer the most authoritative source on data about themselves, wearable self-tracking technologies reflect the simultaneous commodification and knowledge-making that occurs between data and bodies. In this article, we look specifically at wearable, self-tracking devices in order to set up an analytical comparison with a key historical predecessor, the weight scale. By taking two distinct cases of self-tracking – wearables and the weight scale – we can situate current discourses of big data within a historical framing of self-measurement and human subjectivity. While the advertising promises of both the weight scale and the wearable device emphasize self-knowledge and control through external measurement, the use of wearable data by multiple agents and institutions results in a lack of control over data by the user. In the production of self-knowledge, the wearable device is also making the user known to others, in a range of ways that can be both skewed and inaccurate. We look at the tensions surrounding these devices for questions of agency, practices of the body, and the use of wearable data by courtrooms and data science to enforce particular kinds of social and individual discipline.

Personal informatics for everyday life: How users without prior self-tracking experience engage with personal data

“…For medical and clinical purposes self-monitoring systems were used for years under the guidance of therapists or physicians (Elliot et al, 1996). Nevertheless, other technologies for selftracking, such as weight scales, shifted from the doctor's office to the home, from a form of specialist medical knowledge to a private habit and an everyday domestic discipline, since the start of the 20th century (Crawford et al, 2015); while other instruments, like pedometers, were used privately to meet fitness goals since their appearance on the commercial market in the middle of the last century (Tudor-Locke and Bassett, 2004).…”

Personal Tracking of Screen Time on Digital Devices

“…For decades, if not centuries, people have tracked aspects of their own lives: what they eat and drink, what they weigh, the physical activity they engage in, and much more (see [10,40]). The rise of smartphones has made it easier to automate data collection and to present data back to the user.…”

Preferred Biosignals to Predict Migraine Attack

“…Feedback allows the user to understand and modify their activities, behaviours and thus promote their own health. [19].…”