The article examines the trend of self-tracking in today's data-driven society, underscoring how many individuals utilize technologies and platforms to monitor their lives, including mood, fitness, and lifestyle choices. While self-tracking can enhance self-awareness and personal improvement, it also raises concerns about data commodification and the impact of pervasive surveillance culture. The piece critiques the idea that personal experiences can be quantified and solved through data, comparing this mindset to the beliefs held by big tech companies. Ultimately, it questions the implications of adopting such data-centric methodologies in our lives.
Many people set reading targets and log books read on Goodreads or films watched on Letterboxd. Some track daily outfits online with the goal of perfecting personal style.
Self-tracking is regularly promoted as a way toward self-improvement. This kind of data-driven self-surveillance can be interesting, useful, and empowering even, for some.
It veers too closely to the ideology of a tech bro (yikes). Indeed, the former CEO of Google wrote in his book: with enough data and the ability to crunch it, virtually any challenge facing humanity today can be solved.
We live in a society saturated in surveillance and rampant data extraction. It is now well understood that all of us are subject to a process of datafication.
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