Talk:Quantified self

Sousveillance
I suggest removing "sousveillance" from the first paragraph, as sousveillance is the exact opposite of self-monitoring. It means monitoring the monitors---looking outward at others, not inward at the self. Markstock (talk) 16:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I just axed it. If anyone wants to add it back in, please do not associate it directly with "quantified self." Both aims are typically achieved with sensors on the self, but the similarities end there, I believe. 173.162.186.162 (talk) 14:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC) Shoot, I forgot to log in. This was me. Markstock (talk) 14:26, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Somebody added it back in. They seem to be confusing the quantified self with wearable computing.  The references don't support the claim that applying the scientific method to oneself started in the 70s, they are simply references about wearable computing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.93.228 (talk) 23:03, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I noticed that sousveillance remains listed as a synonym. I was going to revive the objection, which seemed to me to be a mistake based on my reading of material by Steve Mann, but when I dived into the research again it seems that the meaning of sousveillance has been broadened to include many activities that are at least closely adjacent to Quantified Self. Interesting evolution. I changed my mind and abandoned my intention to delete the reference, and leave this note as guidance to anybody who has the same impulse.Agaricus-sp (talk) 00:48, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Spam link to my employer's publication
You reverted the spam link which my employer paid me to add to this Wikipedia article. Could you please look at this again? Obviously I am biased, but there are only a handful of authorities on the subject of this Wikipedia article and my organization Consumer Reports is one of them. This is a free guide in consumer language and we are providing this as a nonprofit public service, hopefully without causing a disturbance, and hopefully in accord with Wikipedia's WP:EL policies and customs. I do not want to press the issue with you, but if you have an objection with this source then please voice it. After getting word from you, I will take the source to WP:RSN for other opinions, and if neither you nor others voice an objection, then I will insert it again.

I know Wikipedia's WP:COI policies and I would like to share this information in a way that pleases everyone and which does not make people feel like they are arguing with a robot, as you might have felt when you removed the link.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  11:28, 31 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi User:Bluerasberry! Thanks for trying to follow the policies. I agree though with removing that link - it's not relevant enough to make sense as an external link for this article. This is an article about the quantified self movement, and the link doesn't mention quantified self or seem to have a relationship with the movement other than being about a related topic. Looking at WP:COIADVICE, adding external links (that aren't references) isn't on the explicit list of non-controversial edits, and WP:NOPAY also advises that "you are very strongly discouraged from editing affected articles". I believe it would at least have been appropriate to disclose your COI in the edit summary when you made this edit. Dreamyshade (talk) 00:22, 1 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi . As a general rule, I expect an external link to Consumer Reports would only be appropriate on the Consumer Reports article. And, it looks like it already has one there. The place to discuss ELs would be the External Links Noticeboard. The Reliable Sources Noticeboard would be to discuss if Consumer Reports is/is not a reliable source within a citation or reference. Thank you for pinging me when you started this discussion. It is most appreciated. I check in on EL noticeboard semi-often, but please ping me if you decide to bring this to a wider audience. Stesmo (talk) 03:27, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks both. I still feel like this source is the most relevant layman publication that anyone has provided for this concept but for now and the next ~6 months I am not going to pursue this. I still care a lot about personal data in health and will continue to edit Wikipedia in this field, but I am not going to add this link here. I contribute to Wikipedia as my full time job and I am unable to tag my work edits as being related to work, even though they are, because so much of what I do is work related. If I do something so related as add an external link directly to one of our publications, I will tag that from now on. There probably would have been no controversy if I had cited that source in adding content to this article, which I might do next year. You are correct that an external link to Consumer Reports main site would be inappropriate here and if I see anyone doing anything like that here or elsewhere, I will revert that as is routine. I did not do that though.   Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:42, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The topic is related, but it can be original research / WP:SYNTHESIS to make that connection as editors unless the source makes that connection. It could make sense to cover medical data under "Applications of Quantified Self", but it would make sense to cite articles that explicitly make a connection to quantified self practices, such as this WSJ post and this "DeviceTalk" post. Looking at the document you linked, much of it isn't directly related to quantified self practices, since it's about medical data in general (including hospitals and the FDA using data analysis) - the article about Apple's HealthKit is closer to relevant, but much of it is about hospitals using that data, and it would still be a bit of a stretch. Discussing HealthKit in this article could be better supported by articles that more directly engage with quantified self ideas, such as this Forbes piece or possibly this Fast Company article.
 * It's quick and easy to disclose in edit summaries - I usually just add something like "(COI edit)" to edit summaries when I'm making COI edits, as a polite note to anyone watching the page that they'll probably want to check my user profile and double check my edit. Dreamyshade (talk) 19:05, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Scope of this article
I added a link to a source of information in this article. You said it was out of scope. I wish to give an opinion about the scope of this article.

Obviously the article should cover what reliable sources called "quantified self". The problem is that no one has yet written the definitive guide to "quantified self", and more importantly, a range of terms are used to describe the same concept. Wikipedia articles should not judge sources by what they call a term, but rather by the extent to which they are talking about the same base concept. So for example, various sources use the terms "personal informatics" and "quantified self" to mean the same thing, so sources talking about either should be appropriate here, even though there is no source which explicitly equates the two terms. Wikipedia decides these things with merge discussions.

Right now, the content of this article is probably best called "personal health informatics", and there is no Wikipedia article by that name. The reason why that is a preferable name as compared to "quantified self" is because almost all of this article is about the quantified self movement as it relates to health. Health is a subset of the main concept, but the main concept is not covered here broadly at all.

In the future, I hope that this article is expanded more broadly, and that health becomes a subset of it. Other concepts in quantified health are tracking personal spending (mint.com, Apple Pay/ Google Wallet statements and graphing), counting the number and types of relationships people have (Facebook for friends, Twitter, linkedin for work, tinder/dating sites), and tracking a person's travel (Google Maps, Foursquare, all GPS tracking). Right now, this article does not discuss any of these things because the companies doing these things are not marketing their services as personal data for consumers even though it is the same concept.

I appreciate your looking over this article. There is a major social change here and this is a very popular article - I want it to have the highest quality and best information, and not only be restricted because the well-funded health industry appropriated the term quantified self even though the concept at the heart of this Wikipedia article is ubiquitous.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:42, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi! I see this article currently links to a separate article called Personal Informatics, although that's a stub article. I don't think I agree with this article's current statement that "personal informatics" and "quantified self" are completely interchangeable phrases, and the statement isn't cited, so I think we need to treat it skeptically unless we find confirmation. In my observations, "quantified self" tends to refer to a subset of personal informatics - to a recent movement that grew out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley culture and consumer technology, including meetups and conferences under the "quantified self" brand, which is also influencing SF/SV culture and consumer technology. A lot of that movement focuses on health related data, so it makes sense for this article to include a lot of that, but it should also include "quantified relationships" and other topics that people discuss in the movement. It makes sense to me to discuss "quantified self" in an independent article, and to also have a more general "personal informatics" article that covers more of the history and use of personal data. Dreamyshade (talk) 19:21, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Relevance of photos
Just because there's a new name for this old phenomenon and practice of self-sensing, computerized self-monitoring, doesn't mean previous work should be deleted or removed from the entry. Nike wasn't the first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.14.121 (talk) 16:32, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi! Nike doesn't have to be the first photo in the article, but the photos in the article need to be connected to quantified self in some cited way. There are a lot of topics and projects that are arguably related to quantified self, but as editors we need to reflect what sources say, not what our own opinions are. The idea that "Quantified Self is a new name for Humanistic Intelligence" needs to be supported with a reference if we want to include it in the article, and the "Quantimetric Self-Sensing" project needs to have some reference connecting it to quantified self before we can include it as a representative project. This is part of the No original research policy - editors need to be careful to avoid synthesis of published materials. Are there any useful articles about the historical context of quantified self that could support this connection? Dreamyshade (talk) 06:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Also, do these edits involve your own work? The edits from Special:Contributions/142.150.236.140 and Special:Contributions/174.88.14.121 are all related to one person's work. If so, the Conflict of interest guideline recommends that you disclose your affiliation on your user page and during discussions of the topic. Dreamyshade (talk) 07:48, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Relationship of "quantified self" to other terms
I'm interested in trying to make these statements more precise and better supported by references, to help with better defining the scope of the article:

''Other names for using self-tracking data to improve daily functioning are “self-tracking”, "auto-analytics", “body hacking”, “self-quantifying”, self-surveillance, lifelogging, sousveillance, and Humanistic Intelligence. ''

The term Quantified Self is used interchangeably with Personal Informatics.


 * Reference #1 says "As an advocate of the Quantified Self Movement, a social movement that uses self-tracking data to improve daily functioning" so the first part is supported.
 * Reference #2 says "Adventures in Self-Surveillance, aka The Quantified Self", "a phenomenon known as the Quantified Self, or self-tracking", and "Rubin calls himself a “body hacker”" - so "self-tracking", "self-surveillance", and "body hacking" are supported, although body hacking goes to body modification, which is a different subject.
 * Reference #3 discusses "Humanistic Intelligence" but doesn't mention "quantified self" or the other terms in the list.
 * Reference #4 says "The quantified self" and "an approach known as “self-tracking”, “body hacking” or “self-quantifying”", and it discusses the “Quantified Self” blog and conference - so "self-quantifying" is also supported.

So it looks like "auto-analytics", "lifelogging", and "sousveillance" are not supported by the current references for that sentence, and "humanistic intelligence" needs more support. If I google "personal informatics" with "quantified self", I see that "personal informatics" seems to be a term used mostly in academic work. Here are a few results:


 * "Personal Informatics and Context: Using Context to Reveal Factors that Affect Behavior" (thesis from 2011) - "Personal informatics goes by other names, such as “living by numbers”, “quantified self”, “self-surveillance”, “self-tracking”, and “personal analytics” [Wolf 2009; Yau & Schneider 2009]." and "I recruited participants from a blog dedicated to personal informatics (http://quantifiedself.com)"
 * "Disasters in Personal Informatics: The Unpublished Stories of Failure and Lessons Learned" (workshop description from 2014) - "our goal is to uncover, analyze, discuss, and learn from the failures of Personal Informatics (PI) and Quantified Self (QS) research" and "we will meet with the local Seattle branch of the Quantified Self group. This provides a unique opportunity to bridge academia with an accessible group of practitioners (QS selftrackers) that is already sharing ideas, methods and experiences in a structured way"
 * "Personal Tracking as Lived Informatics" (paper from 2014) - "This paper characterises the use of activity trackers as ‘lived informatics’. This characterisation is contrasted with other discussions of personal informatics and the quantified self." and "The areas of personal informatics and the quantified self concern the collection and use of personal data, often from trackers and life-loggers"
 * "Self-Tracking Modes: Reflexive Self-Monitoring and Data Practices" (paper from 2014) - "The concept of ‘self-tracking’ (also referred to as life-logging, the quantified self, personal analytics and personal informatics)"

These sources could support including "personal informatics", "personal analytics", and "life-logging" as other terms. I tried googling "auto-analytics" with "quantified self", and that brought up some reasonable sources as well:


 * "You, By the Numbers" (2012 article) - "A project called Quantified Self is hosting opportunities for individuals to try out auto-analytics tools and experimental methods."
 * "Tracking the Quantified Self" (2013 article) - "In short, by analyzing detailed data over a long period of time—either by generating charts in Excel or by using auto-analytics tools—self-trackers turn themselves into self-experimenters, perhaps even body hackers."

I can't find strong sources that say that "sousveillance" or "humanistic intelligence" are other terms for quantified self, but I found an interesting source that could be useful for providing context for quantified self: "Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality" (2015): "The notion of the quantified self derives from a core concept of agency and sousveillance, in which the motions of the body are willingly recorded by a participant in the body's activity. Yet there is a much longer heritage of using rational metrics to measure the activity of the human body, only by outside agents" - it goes on to describe Taylorism and the use of quantification in workplaces as a growing pattern.

Dreamyshade (talk) 11:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it would be great if you changed that sentence to match what you have found in your research. You obviously have been diligent to research and consider what terms should be used.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  12:27, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Earlier example of Quantified Self but by a different name
Back in 1996 I travelled to San Francisco, California, and visited with Kevin Kelly (the person who coined the term "Quantified Self") and others at WiReD Magazine's headquarters while I was wearing my quantimetric self-sensing apparatus pictured here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QuantimetricSelfSensingPrototypeMann1996inset.jpg

This is an apparatus I'd been wearing constantly more or less 24 hours a day from 1994 to 1996 sensing heart (ECG), brain (ECG), video (EVG==ElectroVisuoGram), respiration, skin conductivity, and numerous other quantities, streaming live to the Internet, on the World Wide Web.

Recently I confirmed with Kevin Kelly in email correspondence that (1) he remembers this visit taking place; and (2) that what I was doing back in 1994-1996 was Quantified Self.

Specifically, Kevin Kelly wrote back: "I believe we met in the Wired offices around this time [1996]. You were wearing your gear as usual." and "You most definitely were doing the quantify self back then."

Accordingly, I believe it was wrong that this picture, and its associated description and its links to references, etc., was deleted.

Simply because I called it something else ("Quantimetric, Self-Sensing, Sousveillance") does not make this body of work any less an early example (perhaps the earliest example) of Quantified Self.

Glogger (talk) 03:34, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi User:Glogger! To fit with the policy of Verifiability, can you ask Kevin Kelly to post this in a place where other editors can independently verify that he said this, ideally with more context? That way the article can use that link as a reference, since we can't cite this talk page as a reference. Please also see Conflict of interest - it fits with that guideline to avoid adding your own work to the article, and to instead just make suggestions on the talk page here. (In case you've been editing while logged out, please also be aware of the Sock puppetry policy.) Thanks! Dreamyshade (talk) 01:29, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I added the pictures to this discussion.
 * What I think is lacking is description in the images., how would you feel about adding what you said here to the file descriptions there? All the images say write now is "Quantimetric Self-Sensing apparatus (body sensing apparatus with Digital Eye Glass for display of body sensing apparatus output, etc.)" but that is hardly comprehensible.
 * I do not think a reference is necessary - with images relevance is more subjectively determined. I do not find the exchange with KK relevant, because I think the value of the image for this article speaks for itself, but if it is not inconvenient sharing an excerpt of the letter to confirm dates might be useful in the file description of the images. It will not always be easy to place those images in time and right now, those images have almost no explanation of their significance.
 * If the images had the description presented here then I think they would be candidates for going into the article.
 * - I do not immediately see a COI concern. I would like more information about the images also.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  10:44, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi User:Bluerasberry! The COI concern I see is that these photos appear to be of the person who has been adding the photos to the article and commenting on this talk page in favor of their inclusion (Steve Mann/User:Glogger). Here are contribution histories: Special:Contributions/Glogger (6 May 2014 and 30 September 2015), Special:Contributions/142.150.236.140 (10 August 2015; previous edits were to an article about another thing he has been involved with), Special:Contributions/174.88.14.121 (17 August 2015; only edits are about these photos), Special:Contributions/138.51.121.205 (15 October 2015; only edit is about these photos), and Special:Contributions/99.230.243.81 (15 November 2012; other edits are also about projects by him). (Another talk page discussion that may be relevant, from 23 February 2012: Talk:Steve Mann.) Dreamyshade (talk) 08:11, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hm. Considering the past discussions perhaps more confirmation of the educational value of these photos would be useful.
 * , can you cite any publications which ever described the devices featured in these images. Better - have these or similar photos better published in an reliable source? If any professional staff at reputable organization have previously confirmed the relevance of these photos or the concepts behind the devices featured, then that would be supporting evidence that Wikipedia ought to present some record of these things in its history of this concept. Thoughts? Other ideas to respond to concerns?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  11:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Justification for title caps
The first cite links to a page which begins with this paragraph: I am working on a book whose working title is The Quantified Self. For a long time I thought it would be a section of a larger book, called The Macroscope, but this "section" has absorbed more and more of my attention, and I’ve finally admitted that it will be a book of its own.

Is that why this article title is in title caps? I can't myself see any other acceptable reason. &mdash; MaxEnt 22:55, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * MaxEnt, it must have been ! Thank you. This WP article is no longer in title caps, but the logo and Gary Wolfe´s blog stuff is. You are totally right. I´ve changed the article to reflect that QS is a very specific concept by these "Wired Editors". The article conflates it in spots with self tracking in general, which this is not about.--Wuerzele (talk) 17:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Tracking "insulin and cortisol"?
Unless I am mistaken, most people are more likely to track blood glucose and pressure, not levels of hormones like insulin and cortisol as stated in the intro. I really hope I'm wrong, since it would be awesome to cheaply be able to track insulin (alongside blood glucose). If I am correct though, we should re-write that part. Myoglobin (talk) 17:31, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Myoglobin, you are totally correct. Thanks for pointing this out here. I thought the same, flagged this, and anyway, it belongs into the body, not the lede. whats worse, someone used DNA sequencing and the microbiome in the same breath, which is profoundly uninformed and incorrect. this cant be self-tracked. You can buy a one-time status maybe, but tracking no, no. --Wuerzele (talk) 17:16, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Wuerzele Definitely agree with the "DNA tracking"; there's a self-tracking dashboard app called Gyroscope that offers this in their premium version, but it's only a snapshot. If I had data like that, I wouldn't want it cluttering up my daily dashboard (perhaps would log in to that specific sequencer's site from time to time though). Myoglobin (talk) 17:25, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Quantify Transformations
Tracking function's transformations from sensation, emotion, mentation, meaning, awareness, consciousness and maybe even a self and observation,45.49.226.155 (talk) 00:36, 9 June 2018 (UTC)Arnold45.49.226.155 (talk) 00:36, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Self-tracking
This term currently redirects here. I wonder if it is not more popular than quantified self? Maybe this article should be renamed? Or are those concepts related but separate, and that redirect should be made into a separate article? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:42, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:38, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * QuantimetricSelfSensingPrototypeMann1996inset.jpg

private organization named "quantified self" + Wikidata
Wikidata manages interwiki links among various languages of Wikipedia.

Currently this English Wikipedia article is matched to d:Q1337542 in Wikidata. From Wikidata, anyone can navigate to various other language Wikipedia articles.

There is a conflict because there is a private organization called "Quantified Self" then there is the general concept of the Quantified Self. The organization seems to be making a claim to leadership or general authority over the concept. The resulting problem is that the Wikidata item variously describes both the organization and the general concept, as do I think some of the other language Wikipedia articles. Also, visibly here in English Wikipedia, there is the application of a Wikidata infobox which presents the organization, when here the content is about the concept.

I hesitate to just delete the infobox here because the confusion remains in Wikidata and other languages of Wikipedia, but also, I do not see how to quickly untangle this, or send a multi-lingual alert to the problem, or how to log this as an conflict which could recur either here again or which may become systemic with infoboxes. I like the idea of Wikidata infoboxes, and an article like this one on quantification would be a good place to address problems.

For now I am making this note and taking no further action.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  01:05, 19 February 2021 (UTC)