SelfTracking, Gina Neff
SelfTracking, Gina Neff
List: $27.98 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Self-Tracking

Author: Gina Neff, Dawn Nafus

Narrator: Karen Saltus

Unabridged: 4 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 07/01/2016

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

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 audiobook 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jay

“Self-Tracking” discusses the uses of self-tracking, focusing on medical uses and the technology that is making tracking easier. Think Fitbits and emotion journals and Instragrammed meal pictures. Much of the discussion centers around the ownership and legalities of the data created by tracking. The......more

Goodreads review by Bhanna

Compared to the rest of the MIT Essential Knowledge series, this book was a bit of a let down. I think the more accurate title for this book would have been "Data ethics for self tracking", it left a lot to be desired when it comes to the world of self-tracking. Given that the book was published in......more