Slides from a lecture on the quantified self trend, prepared for communications students in May 2016. The lecture is based on a series of blog posts I wrote on the topic: https://medium.com/exploring-the-quantified-self
10. 2007: the term Quantified Self
is coined by Wired editors
"In the past, the methods of quantitative assessment were laborious
and arcane. You had to take measurements manually and record
them in a log; you had to enter data into spreadsheets and perform
operations using unfriendly software; you had to build graphs to
tease understanding out of the numbers. Now much of the
data-gathering can be automated, and the record-keeping and
analysis can be delegated to a host of simple Web apps.”
- Gary Wolf, Wired, 2009
12. And today?
You can easily track activity & sleep with wearables
and explore data on your smartphone:
13. What’s different about today?
• SENSORS: cheap, small, low power
• DEVICES: wearables, smartphones, smart X
• APPS: “There’s an app for that” - in your pocket!
14. Hi, I’m Alja.
• In the past 1,030 days I:
• took 10,429,812 steps (avg. 10,175 / day)
• climbed 13,839 floors
• slept on average 439 minutes each night
• fell asleep in 12 minutes on average and had an
average 92% sleep efficiency
15. How do I track this?
With the help of wearables, apps
and smart home devices:
16. What can be quantified?
• Activity (steps, distance, floors climbed …)
• Sleep (restlessness, time asleep)
• Heart rate (passive, during activity)
• Location (using phone’s GPS data)
• Productivity (social media and app usage)
• …
34. So many stats!
• In the past 1,030 days I:
• took 10,429,812 steps (avg. 10,175 / day)
• climbed 13,839 floors
• slept on average 439 minutes each night
• fell asleep in 12 minutes on average and had an
average 92% sleep efficiency
37. Well …
• Weight increases can be mapped to important
milestones/deadlines at work.
• When I feel like I haven’t gotten any sleep during the
night, I actually do spend most of the night sleeping, I just
have more awake times.
• I was able to start going to bed a bit earlier by setting up
a “Prepare for bed” reminder on my wrist-worn wearables.
• Maintaining the recommended humidity level at home
makes me feel and sleep better, especially during winter.
53. This is not science fiction anymore:
• smart pills that monitor the effect a certain medicine
or diet have on your body
• glucose-measuring contact lenses
• implantable chips that replace your ID
• wearables that read your mind and act as
brain-computer interfaces
54. Hardware and software
meet the human body
Highly personalized medicine,
based on direct monitoring,
sending data to your doctor in real-time