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Essays on Technology and Culture

How the iPhone Helped Federico Viticci Get Back in Shape After Cancer

“The iPhone is an object that we buy. It’s made by Apple, which is a company that wants to make money. But that’s not how I look at this. Call me naive and romantic, but I dropped cynicism a long time ago. Think about it this way: there are people who found a way to make a tiny computer that’s always with us. Then, there are other people – indie developers and big companies – who make software that can help us work and live better. We get the chance to experience all this and tweak our lifestyles with the aid of apps. And even if some of these people are driven by greed or questionable motives, the end result is that today we can use a phone to be healthier.

I can track and optimize my lifestyle with an iPhone. An entire ecosystem of apps, services, and devices capable of monitoring my nutrition, weight, fitness activity, and even sleep uses my iPhone as the central, private hub that I control. On the iPhone, everything is collected and visualized by a single Health app, which can be connected to more apps. As a cancer survivor who wants to improve his lifestyle because of a newfound appreciation of life, all this is incredible”

Life After Cancer: How the iPhone Helped Me Achieve a Healthier Lifestyle – MacStories

Federico’s story is exactly the sort of thing that interests me when we talk about technology. It’s not about the specs, or the branding, or the price tag for the most expensive model. The ways technology can change our lives, to improve them, to utterly transform them—that’s simply incredible.