We’ve only been in an “always on” world for a handful of years, and we’re still figuring out the limits of what amount of technology in our life is good for us. Not just how much technology we should use, but when and where. Ellis Hamburger’s “We are all Glassholes Now” captures one area of our attempts to figure out this relationship, in terms of taking photos at concerts.
In this new world of hyper-documentation we’ll have to figure out what feels right and what doesn’t — new etiquettes and customs and mores. These new norms will focus on utility and also social acceptance.
Since seeing the band Savages last year, I’ve been trying to obsess less about documenting concerts, so as to be in the moment, but the debate expands far beyond just holding up a screen at a concert. When we pick up a pen and a notebook to write, or we play the “Phone Stack” game at dinner, we make a conscious choice to define the terms on which we use our technology. Even something as simple as “no computers or smartphones” in the bedroom is a powerful dividing line in establishing a limit in our technological relationships.
I don’t think this is a new pattern. Certain people, people like us—nerds—think about this stuff a lot. The why they think about it part varies. Maybe they get paid to do it, or maybe they’re just the kind of person who easily gets obsessed with new shiny gizmos. Or both. We’re the early-adopter types, and when things get too much, we’ll be the first to try something else. And tell the world about it. It’s easy for us to throw our lives out of balance because we’re so addicted to whatever glowing, buzzing, shiny thing is next on the must-have list. After a while, self-realization kicks in, and we try to change something.
As much as we grumble about the amount of time we spend on Facebook, the piles of apps we never use on our smartphones, or how our iPad apps aren’t being updated, we know there’s some utility to the technological things in our lives. Facebook keeps us in touch with our family and friends we never get to see. The one random app on our Smartphone comes in handy about once every blue moon. Our iPad replaces our television. It takes time for us to figure it out what these things are for, and even longer to figure out why.
When I see people in my circles talk about “going analog,” I don’t see it as rejecting technology. I see it as self-regulation. If you can’t handle infinity in your pocket, try leaving infinity in your desk drawer and locking it. If you can’t get your writing done on a computer, whip out a pen and paper. As we figure out what all these things are for, and redefine our relationship to our gadgets and the network they connect us to, we find our own balance again. We cut the trail that the people behind us, the new adopters, walking down the street glued to their screen will eventually follow.
So much of our technological “innovations” are either about flinging existing bits from Point A to Point B, or making new bits to fling from Point A to Point B. We consume bits, and we create bits, most of us consuming far more bits than we create. Those bits take the form of TV shows, video games, photographs, books, music, Tweets and Facebook Statuses, and pithy blog posts about technology, but they’re all just bits. We can make them faster, and we can fling them faster, but they’re still just bits.
There are so many problems that cannot be solved by flinging bits. No matter how many bits we can fling per second, those bits won’t clean someone’s filthy drinking water, slow down global warming, or any of a number of problems that require flinging real things, which requires real people. Sure, sometimes flinging bits can result in flinging a real thing, but those bits aren’t the thing, they are just the signal that a real thing is needed. You fling bits to Uber, Uber flings bits to a driver, the driver comes to you.
That’s all well and good. But you can’t fling bits to get clean water. Many people without clean water don’t even have a device to fling bits with. Even if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good until they have the infrastructure to fling bits.
There’s so much brainpower and money locked up in making and flinging bits. If we applied that same money and brainpower to flinging real things, what miracles might we bring about?
The recent launch of April Zero, a gorgeous public display of personal tracking data caught our eyes, as well. I can’t speak for Nicholas Felton, aka Feltron, but I suspect that half of his self-tracking is to provide data for him to experiment with data visualization and design as it is collecting the details of his life. Data can be gorgeous, and our lives are a gold mine of potentially interesting data to collect and visualize. Anyone who self-tracks as a hobby I can’t fault.
Some part of me approached life-logging and self-tracking from a hobbyist perspective, but I wasn’t getting any of the pleasures that come from a hobby out of it. If I flipped thought my Moves data, it was often the same basic route five days a week. Weekends had variation, but not a whole lot. I’m a creature of routine. I stop at the same set of lunch spots on Seventh Avenue, hit the gym three times a week, go to a writing group on the West Side, and occasionally go to a concert. My location data is the opposite of beautiful. It’s dull. Dull. Dull. My God it’s dull, it’s so desperately dull and tedious and stuffy and boring and des-per-ate-ly DULL.
If I’m not getting anything out of self-tracking that’s worth the set up time, battery draining, and mindfulness of checking up on my data, is it worth it? Of course not. Each of these services I drop is one less piece of mental clutter, more space on my hard drive, and—yes—less data I’m giving up for free to some venture-backed startup company that’s just going to get eaten by Facebook or Google in a year or two. Which is why I stick with tracking stuff that focuses on actionable data. If I know I’m spending two hours a week on Facebook, or Tweetbot is my most used iPhone app, that’s actionable data.
Yet, the Quantified Self and Life-Logging movements are fascinating. There’s something incredible about the amount of accurate sensors we can cram into our devices—we’re almost to a Star Trek Tricorder in our phone. The biggest reason why I haven’t replaced my lost Fitbit is that I’m curious what Apple is going to in the fitness tracker space once iOS 8 comes out. We’re in early days and still learning what we should track, when, and why. Those answers aren’t going to be the same for all of us.
Moves. RescueTime. Fitbit. MyFitnessPal. RunKeeper. Sleep Cycle. Swarm. Reporter. Lift. Mint. Last.fm. I do a lot of self tracking. I know where I’ve gone, how I got there, how much I spent on stuff while I was there, and what music I was listening to at the time. I know, down to the minute, how much time I spend on Facebook while using my laptop. Several times a day, my phone buzzes to ask me what I’m doing, where I am, and what app I used last. There’s data tracking how many steps I’ve taken for the last six months, and data on my sleep for almost that same amount of time. Every time I arrive at my office, and every time I leave it gets logged to a spreadsheet in Google Docs. There is precious little I do not know about my habits, online and offline.
The point of the Quantified Self movement is that once you have a bunch of data on yourself, you can identify patterns—and then things to change to improve yourself. Then, you check your new data, and if the change is working, keep at it. It’s about self-awareness, and then self-improvement. That’s the spirit, at least, with which I embarked on the step-tracking, location-logging, iPhone-buzzing, self-reporting endeavor. And, yes, it’s been useful in some ways. Knowing how many steps I take during a day has inspired me to move more. Logging my calories makes me want to seek out healthier lunch options, and helps me shed pounds. Since I’ve taken up Couch to 5K, RunKeeper’s been a useful way to track my workouts, too. Sleep Cycle doesn’t help me get out of bed, which is a problem, but I think it’s me, more than the app. These stay.
It’s the other data that I’m wondering if I need. Moves, for example, lets me know all the places I go during the day. I can see my travels on a map, day in and day out. And there’s not a whole lot of variation. I go to work, I go to lunch, I go home. That’s because I’m a 9-to–5ing Corporate Stooge. Before going with Fitbit, Moves did serve as a great pedometer, but now that feature is quadruply redundant between the Fitbit app, MyFitnessPal, DayOne for iPhone, and Reporter app tracking my steps. (Plus, there’s the whole Facebook thing.) As it stands, Moves is just one more thing sucking up battery. Deleted.
Swarm is another location-tracking app without the automation of Moves. Before it was spun out into its own app, Foursquare was worthwhile as a way to inspire me to find interesting spots and collect badges. As a stand-alone app, it’s lost its interest. With so few friends using Foursquare/Swarm, I don’t even get the social benefit of knowing where my friends are so I can hang out with them. I’ll know if I’ve been somewhere interesting, or important. Logging it publicly serves no useful purpose. I can always just write it down if I need to remember a great place. Gone.
RescueTime and Reporter are apps I’m using to keep track of how I spend my time on my devices. I’ve been using RescueTime on my Mac for a while, and my weekly emails are sobering. (I spent how many hours on Facebook? Even one is too many!) However, it doesn’t track what I do at work—there’s a Windows version, but I don’t think IT would like it if I installed it—so RescueTime is only useful for figuring out how much time I spend on personal projects. I’m still working on ways to ensure I do that. Reporter is a new piece of software that buzzes me to log a few pieces of data: “Am I working?”, “What am I doing?”, and “What iPhone app did I use last?” (For my own curiosity. The big winner is Tweetbot, so far.) There are more pointed questions I could use it to ping me about, but I’m still working out whether this is even going to be something useful. Not Sure Yet.
As for the rest? Lift is a habit tracking app that works best when I actually think to open it. I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with the app, and I’m in the middle of giving it another chance. The social features are good for positive reinforcement, but I’m still unsure about it. Mint is actually very helpful, especially since I’ll be renting an apartment again and need to keep a closer eye on my finances. Last.fm? I’m of two minds on it… it’s a great way to discover new music, but I rarely think to check there when I’m looking for something new. I think it’ll have to go, despite years of use. I’m just not getting anything out of it, and don’t want to bother. Baleeted.
Before I dive into another service that automatically tracks some aspect of my life, I need to ask myself more questions about why I’m bothering. What do I want to know about myself? What am I trying to change? What happens if I’m successful, and what happens if I’m not? To just dive in and expect that some sort of pattern or sense will emerge from all the data I’m collecting about myself. That’s magical thinking. The same magical thinking that goes into big data, that enough data can overcome our own ignorance and biases.
Part of the problem is the “set it and forget it” nature of many of these services. Unobtrusiveness is important when you’re spying on yourself, but you still need to see what you’re collecting and decide if it’s of any use. I’m not trying to be Nicholas Felton, I just want to have a better sense of how I’m spending my time, money, and energy. I want to use this information to help me focus on the things that make me happy, and not to do more work, but do better work. It feels odd to just drop the bomb and wipe out years of data on where I’ve been and what music I’ve heard. Yet, I know the important things. My memories aren’t tied up in services, they’re in my head. For some things in life, that’s the only place they need to be.
[W]hen we think about what technology wants, it makes sense to think of the agency involved. Who is the technology for?
Back in the 1990, Steve Jobs described the personal computer as a “bicycle for the mind.” At the risk of hagiography, Jobs’s vision is an inherently humanist one, where technology exists for the primary benefit of its user. We could argue about whether Apple’s meeting that high standard, but they’re the closest of the big technology companies. Google attempts to justify its collection of data with services like Google Now that process it and return it to you in smartly timed, digestible chunks. The goal of Google Now is to make you more comfortable with giving Google more and more information about you. My own experience with Google Now left me thinking that I wasn’t getting my data’s worth.
Is the technology we use designed for us, or for someone else? I think back to Jessica Ferris’s piece on quitting Facebook because of a stalker, and how her experience conflicts so strongly with Facebook’s basic value proposition. That is, Facebook is the place where you connect with your friends—people you know and care about. By having a huge network of people, and being able to connect you to the people you know, you benefit. By having a huge network of people interacting, they benefit by gaining data.
But, we might not want to connect with someone we know. In personal relationships, transparency isn’t always the goal. We have aspects of ourselves from people, but Facebook isn’t about hiding. It’s about collecting our data. In that sense, Facebook isn’t for us—it’s for the advertisers who want to know who we know, what we like, and where we go, so as to better target ads to us. And that is based on the assumption that the ads they’re targeting even work. Facebook presents the facade of being for us, but it’s not hard to find places where that facade is falling off to reveal the truth. They reveal it at their developer conferences each year.
Who is our technology for? That depends on the technology, and its creators. As it stands, a growing amount of it is for someone other than the person who’s going to be using it the most. It’s for advertisers, VC investors, and the technological elite with money to burn and little incentive to think of anything other than how to maximize their take. If users have lost agency over technology, if it’s no longer for us, part of why is our fault for surrendering our agency willingly. It’s as much our fault as those who have seized the opportunity to exploit it, be those exploiters Google, Facebook, or the NSA.