Self-Tracking by Gina Neff

Self-Tracking by Gina Neff

What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking.

People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. Ninety million wearable sensors were shipped in 2014 to help us gather data about our lives. This book examines how people record, analyze, and reflect on this data, looking at the tools they use and the communities they become part of. Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus describe what happens when people turn their everyday experience-in particular, health and wellness-related experience-into data, and offer an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of using these technologies. They consider self-tracking as a social and cultural phenomenon, describing not only the use of data as a kind of mirror of the self but also how this enables people to connect to, and learn from, others.

Neff and Nafus consider what's at stake: who wants our data and why; the practices of serious self-tracking enthusiasts; the design of commercial self-tracking technology; and how self-tracking can fill gaps in the healthcare system. Today, no one can lead an entirely untracked life. Neff and Nafus show us how to use data in a way that empowers and educates.

Neff, Gina: - Gina Neff is Associate Professor of Communication and Sociology and a senior data scientist at the University of Washington. She is the author of Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries (MIT Press).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262529129
ISBN 10	0262529122
Title	Self-Tracking
Author	Dawn Nafus
Series	Mit Press Essential Knowledge Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2016-06-24
Number of pages	248
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.