TED@Cannes
Gary Wolf: The quantified self
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At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf gives a 5-min intro to an intriguing new pastime: using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending -- just about everything in daily life you can measure -- in gloriously geeky detail.
Gary Wolf - Journalist
Journalist Gary Wolf spends his days in pursuit of the most fascinating things. As a contributing editor at Wired, he's written about technology, mushroom hunters, venture capitalists ... Full bio
Journalist Gary Wolf spends his days in pursuit of the most fascinating things. As a contributing editor at Wired, he's written about technology, mushroom hunters, venture capitalists ... Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I got up this morning at 6:10 a.m.
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after going to sleep at 12:45 a.m.
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I was awakened once during the night.
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My heart rate was 61 beats per minute --
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my blood pressure, 127 over 74.
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I had zero minutes of exercise yesterday,
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so my maximum heart rate during exercise wasn't calculated.
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I had about 600 milligrams of caffeine,
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zero of alcohol.
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And my score on the Narcissism Personality Index,
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or the NPI-16,
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is a reassuring 0.31.
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We know that numbers are useful for us
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when we advertise, manage, govern, search.
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I'm going to talk about how they're useful when we reflect,
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learn, remember
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and want to improve.
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A few years ago, Kevin Kelly, my partner, and I
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noticed that people were subjecting themselves
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to regimes of quantitative measurement and self-tracking
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that went far beyond the ordinary, familiar habits
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such as stepping on a scale every day.
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People were tracking their food via Twitter,
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their kids' diapers on their iPhone.
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They were making detailed journals
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of their spending, their mood,
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their symptoms, their treatments.
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Now, we know some of the technological facts
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that are driving this change in our lifestyle --
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the uptake and diffusion of mobile devices,
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the exponential improvement in data storage
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and data processing,
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and the remarkable improvement in human biometric sensors.
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This little black dot there
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is a 3D accelerometer.
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It tracks your movement through space.
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It is, as you can see, very small and also very cheap.
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They're now down to well under a dollar a piece,
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and they're going into all kinds of devices.
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But what's interesting
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is the incredible detailed information that you can get
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from just one sensor like this.
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This kind of sensor
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is in the hit biometric device --
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among early adopters at the moment -- the Fitbit.
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This tracks your activity and also your sleep.
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It has just that sensor in it.
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You're probably familiar with the Nike+ system.
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I just put it up because that little blue dot is the sensor.
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It's really just a pressure sensor
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like the kind that's in a doorbell.
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And Nike knows how to get
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your pace and distance from just that sensor.
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This is the strap
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that people use to transmit heart-rate data
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to their Nike+ system.
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This is a beautiful, new device
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that gives you detailed sleep tracking data,
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not just whether you're asleep or awake, but also your phase of sleep --
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deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep.
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The sensor is just a little strip of metal in that headband there.
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The rest of it is the bedside console;
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just for reference, this is a sleep tracking system from just a few years ago --
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I mean, really until now.
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And this is the sleep tracking system of today.
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This just was presented
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at a health care conference in D.C.
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Most of what you see there is an asthma inhaler,
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but the top is a very small GPS transceiver,
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which gives you the date and location
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of an asthma incident,
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giving you a new awareness
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of your vulnerability
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in relation to time and environmental factors.
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Now, we know that new tools
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are changing our sense of self in the world --
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these tiny sensors that gather data in nature,
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the ubiquitous computing
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that allows that data to be understood and used,
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and of course the social networks
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that allow people to collaborate and contribute.
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But we think of these tools as pointing outward,
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as windows
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and I'd just like to invite you to think of them
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as also turning inward
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and becoming mirrors.
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So that when we think about using them
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to get some systematic improvement,
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we also think about how they can be useful for self-improvement,
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for self-discovery, self-awareness, self-knowledge.
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Here's a biometric device:
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a pair of Apple Earbuds.
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Last year, Apple filed some patents
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to get blood oxygenation,
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heart rate and body temperature via the Earbuds.
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What is this for?
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What should it be for?
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Some people will say it's for biometric security.
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Some people will say it's for public health research.
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Some people will say it's for avant-garde marketing research.
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I'd like to tell you
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that it's also for self-knowledge.
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And the self isn't the only thing; it's not even most things.
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The self is just our operation center,
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our consciousness,
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our moral compass.
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So, if we want to act
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more effectively in the world,
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we have to get to know ourselves better.
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Thank you.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Gary Wolf - JournalistJournalist Gary Wolf spends his days in pursuit of the most fascinating things. As a contributing editor at Wired, he's written about technology, mushroom hunters, venture capitalists ...
Why you should listen
Gary Wolf is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he writes regularly about the culture of science and technology (as well as many other topics). He is also the co-founder, with Wired colleague Kevin Kelly, of The Quantified Self, a blog about "selfknowledge through numbers."
He was an early editor at Hotwired / Wired Digital, and helped push the technical and editorial limits of the early web. His books include Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader (with Joey Anuff) and Wired: A Romance, and he’s working on a book called (for now) The Quantified Self.
Gary Wolf | Speaker | TED.com