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From: RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The Quantified Self  your life in numbers
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 20:49:07 +0000 (UTC)
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On 2014-03-03, wjwlsn <ibillwilson@gmail.com> wrote:
> RS Woods wrote on 2014-Feb-26:
>> Apps like Reporter are part of a growing trend around "the quantified
>> self" ...<snip>...
>> People use self-tracking tools to share information on everything from
>> the progression of Parkinson’s Disease to the relative health of an
>> artificial heart valve through blood analysis to the fulfillment of a
>> reading goal of five books a week.
>
> Ordinarily, this idea of "the quantified self" wouldn't really interest
> me. It wasn't until today, when I saw a reference to this idea in an
> article about "Internet of Things", that I started to take it seriously.
>
> http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/building-a-solid-world.html
>
> «... The Internet of Things crossed our radar back in 2001... It was
> an interesting idea: we wondered what would be possible if we could
> assign an IP address to every physical object. Back then, we were
> skeptical: who cares? Why would I want my shoes to have an IP address?
> That question is still useful, but the answers we’re getting now
> are much different. In 2001, networked shoes sounded like gratuitous
> geekery, but in 2014, in the context of the Quantified Self,
> network-enabled shoes that log your every step make complete sense...»
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure if there'a point to be made here; I'm still
> thinking about it. However, I did find the juxtaposition of Quantified
> Self, Internet of Things, and Big Data (mentioned in both articles) to
> be quite interesting.
>
> Regards, Bill
>

That *is* interesting.  Not sure I want my shoes tracking me, but it
seems to be the future.  Some day your every movement will be logged.

One of the first guys I read about tracking his own stats was, not
surprisingly, the guy who built Wolfram Alpha: Stephen Wolfram.
Interesting blog piece I initially pooh-poohed as the obsessive behavior
of a numbers guru.  But maybe there's more to it than that.

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/