What is the Quantified Self?
Kevin Kelly
The central question of the coming century is Who Are We? What is a human? What does it mean to be a person? Is human nature fixed? Sacred? Infinitely expandable? And in the meantime, how do I get through all my email? Or live to be 100.
We believe that the answers to these cosmic questions will be found in the personal. Real change will happen in individuals as they work through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge of one's body, mind and spirit. Many seek this self-knowledge and we embrace all paths to it. However the particular untrodden path we have chosen to explore here is a rational one: Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved. So we are on a quest to collect as many personal tools that will assist us in quantifiable measurement of ourselves. We welcome tools that help us see and understand bodies and minds so that we can figure out what humans are here for. Suggested categories include:
Chemical Body Load Counts
Personal Genome Sequencing
Lifelogging
Self Experimentation
Risks/Legal Rights/Duties
Behavior monitoring
Location tracking
Non-invasive Probes
Digitizing Body Info
Sharing Health Records
Psychological Self-Assesments
Medical Self-Diagnostics
Your hosts for this initial journey are Kevin Kelly (kk at kk dot org) and Gary Wolf (gary at aether dot com). Write us with your recommendations, tips, and observations.
