There’s a fascinating article in this weekend’s New York Times magazine about the Data Driven Life. The story outlines the growing trend for self-monitoring and self-tracking in order to compile records of behavior and performance in order to inform personal decisions. The story pulls together examples of individuals who have meticulously recorded their lives in order to improve their behavior, and points to many reasons why this move toward self recording will become the norm in the future.
“Four things have changed. First, electronic sensors got smaller and better. Second, people started carrying powerful computing devices, typically disguised as mobile phones. Third, social media made it seem normal to share everything. And fourth, we began to get an inkling of the rise of a global superintelligence known as the cloud.”
The underlying trend here is a sensored existence and systems that can take this information and turn it into actionable information. The sensor web is growing stronger, and starting first on the personal level rather than just sensored surroundings. This information will have a strong location component, and this personal-level data will amalgamate into a larger knowledge of society as a whole.
