Summary:
Continuing with last week’s theme about personal informatics, this paper was heavily focused on learning about one’s self through personal tracking. The main argument of this paper was that in fields such as accounting or science, numbers mean everything. They allow us to see patterns and make predictions. Thus, the same reasoning can be applied to our personal lives as well by tracking numbers about what we do. Despite all the positives about personal tracking this paper lists, there were some drawbacks it mentioned briefly. Namely, that of crushing self-awareness due to “the numbers don't lie”. Overall however, the paper strongly implies that self-monitoring can have benefits in all areas of a persons’ life.
Response:
My initial response to the beginning of the paper was positive, as the arguments it made in regards to using numbers in other areas made sense. However, as it delved further into what it meant to do personal tracking, it became obvious to me this was not a simple task to do (and probably what its not as widely spread as the paper would have one to believe). Following this train of thought, I thought about last week’s paper 'Why Groupaware fails', and I think some of the lessons in that could apply here, particularly in regards to maintenance. Additionally, in tracking personal data, we ourselves become a collaborative system around our own data.
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