This article was very interesting because it had many examples of self-tracking and analysis.
Initially, the paper reminds us that we do a lot of data collection and analysis in our jobs. Therefore, it isn't so weird if we do some numeric data collection for ourselves. Moreover importantly, this numeric data can be manipulated to extract meaningful information for ourselves or others.
Another idea is that the human behaviour is a mystery, that was explored earlier by the means of thinking deep about ourselves and then writing about it as literature. Since, today we have newer technology that help measure, such as weight scales, accelerometer to track a runner movements, headbands to monitor sleep etc, why not use these tracking devices to monitor human behaviour and discover irregularities. Moreover, numeric data represents clear comparable results.
The most significant point raised in the paper is that each person is different form the other, therefore the goal is to discover something about yourself and not human beings in genenral. For example, there is this person diagnosed of a disease, and doctors treated him as a standard case because they had treatment for the standard case. However, with tracking he can determine whether he is a standard case or not.
In addition, the paper found that its just not the sub-concious we are not aware of, we forget are actions as well. We can focus our attention to one or two things that we need to do, but self tracking devices can keep a track about us and aid us in remembering our actions and represent them as clear numeric results.
However, tracking devices are unemotional and display results that show some bad behaviour in an unemotional way. Therefore, adding human-like reassurances to the results can help us overcome this problem.
Finally, tracking devices look weird today, however when they become common it will be accepted as a norm, a good example is the mobile phone.
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