Luke Martin
ENG110Z
Martin
15 May 2015
Self-Quantification and the Immunity from Critique
Gary Wolf, in a recent article for the New York Times championing the values of “The
Data-Driven Life,” suggests that “our quest to figure ourselves out” will increasingly demand
that we “look outward to the cloud, as well as inward toward the psyche.” Over 500 products
and applications are currently on the market that help turn our daily activities into measurable
quantities; these track everything from sleep success to mood fluctuations to bowel
movements to sex routines. While the number of self-trackers grows (over 18 billion “total
steps” taken by Nike+ users, and counting), few have asked what it means to “look outward to
the cloud” in order to understand ourselves. I will suggest that unlike many other technologies
that also extend our cognitive and physical faculties, practices of self-quantification carry a
uniquely dangerous side effect: the disabling of our ability to self-reflect. Self-quantification
demands that we outsource our self-reflection in a way that makes it increasingly difficult to
reflect on its value. Beginning with a theorization of media through Marshall McLuhan, my
analysis will move to the rhetoric of those self-quantifiers like Gary Wolf, to show how their
own celebration of self-quantification might hint at this dangerous implication.
While researching for a recent class on self-quantification, my search engine results
came up surprisingly short. I was looking for an article or post exploring the delinquencies of
this practice of personal data-mining in order to pose against self-quantifier devotees like David
Rowan, Gary Wolf, Kevin Kelly, and Gareth MacLeod. I found a handful of bloggers who had
given up self-tracking because of its time commitments and a few others whose brand of
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humanism fears any gadget-ization or metric-ization of the human.1 This surprising void forced
me to confront a possibility inherent within the logic and practice of self-quantification: insofar
as a critique of self-quantification would require a self-reflection on its personal consequences,
perhaps it alters our ability to self-reflect.
Before addressing the specific effects of self-quantification technology, we need to
establish the premise that technologies have the capacity to deeply transform our cognitive and
physical capacities and tendencies. In Understanding Media (1964), Marshall McLuhan presents
his version of the “extension thesis.” In its most basic form, this thesis suggests that every
technology or media is an extension of some human physical or cognitive ability.2 McLuhan
adds a term which complicates this simple definition: “Any invention or technology is an
extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new
ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body” (45). We
cannot stop at our definition of technologies as extensions; each is also an amputation. Just as
they enable or augment some faculty through extension, they also disable some aspect of that
faculty.
What faculty does self-quantification technology augment? When asked about the
development of these technologies in an interview with Emily Singer for MIT Technology
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One of these critiques takes the form of a poem published in a surprising place, the veritable temple of
personal data-mining, quantifiedself.com. In it, Alexandra Carmichael describes how tracking became an
“instrument of self torture.” A more sustained critique that particularly addresses the time
commitments and over-complexities in self-tracking can be found in Emily Singer’s “Quantifying Myself:
Self-Tracking Failures.”
2 Many mistakenly think of the extension thesis as stemming directly from McLuhan’s work. However,
the same basic idea has a long range of precedents, from Karl Marx’s discussion of machinery in Capital
(see, for example, chapter on “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry”) to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s claim in
the essay “Works and Days”: “All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and
senses.”
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Review, Dave Marvit, Vice President of Fujitsu Labs, responded: “When we think about the five
senses, there have been technologies to augment each of them. But what is sort of fascinating,
technologies haven’t augmented this sixth sense, if you will, which is our own sense of selfawareness. There haven’t been technologies to tell us when we’re hungry or drowsy or
stressed. And self-tracking is all about that. It’s all about augmenting this additional sense of
self-awareness.” If we are to take McLuhan’s suggestion above seriously, Dave Marvit’s
optimism should be tempered. Before becoming quantified selves, arming ourselves with an
array of new self-reflective contraptions, we should ask: what is amputated after selfawareness is extended?
…
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Works Cited
Carmichael, Alexandra. “Why I Stopped Tracking.” Quantified Self. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. <
http://quantifiedself.com/2010/04/why-i-stopped-tracking/ >
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Works and Days.” The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (RWE.org).
Web. 27 Nov. 2012. < http://www.rwe.org/complete-works/vii-society-andsolitude/chapter-vii-works-and-days.html >
Singer, Emily. “The Measured Life.” Video interview with Dave Marvit. MIT Technology Review.
Web. 21 June 2011. < http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/424390/themeasured-life/ >
---. “Quantifying Myself: Self-Tracking Failures.” MIT Technology Review. Web. 22 June 2011. <
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424441/quantifying-myself-self-trackingfailures/ >
Marx, Karl. Capital Vol. 1. Trans. Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Print.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Print.
Wolf, Gary. “The Data-Driven Life.” The New York Times. Web. 28 April 2010. <
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurementt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 >
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