IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 28
drawn from self-monitoring, the social determinants
of these attributes are hidden. Illness, emotional distress, lack of happiness, or lack of "productivity" in
the workplace become represented primarily as failures of individual self-control or efficiency, and therefore as requiring greater or more effective efforts,
including perhaps increased intensity of self-tracking
regimens, to produce a "better self."
The quantified self approach may therefore be
viewed as one of many heterogeneous strategies
and discourses that position the neoliberal self as a
responsible citizen, willing and able to take care of
her or his self-interest and welfare. Foucault's writings on the practices and technologies of the self
in neoliberalism are pertinent to understanding the
quantified self as a particular mode of governing the
self [18], [19]. As scholars drawing upon Foucault's
work on neoliberalism have contended, this political
approach promotes the concept of the citizen who
needs no coercion to behave productively and in the
interests of the state. rather, the citizen voluntarily
takes up modes of practice that both achieves selfinterest and conforms to state objectives. Governmental power is exercised through the regulation,
monitoring, and surveillance of citizens' bodies and
encouraging citizens to engage in these practices on
their own behalf [20], [21].
The concept of the quantified self takes up and
interprets a view of the body/self that positions it
as amenable to improvement, an object of personal
enterprise and work. One aspect of this ideal of the
responsible, entrepreneurial self involves the imperative of active risk avoidance and attempts to monitor and manage one's health as part of promoting
one's life chances [20], [22], [23]. when self-tracking
tools incorporate gamification strategies, such selfmanagement is rendered not only into a responsible
activity but also as fun and competitive [10].
Achieving self-knowledge is an important dimension of responsible self-management. The data that
are collected as part of self-tracking and the patterns
and associations that can be identified in and between
these data are vital to this project. Thus for Quantified
Self member Alexandra Carmichael, self-tracking her
moods and feelings of wellness or illness is "a way of
taking an honest look at myself, seeing what needs to
be improved, and understanding my patterns" [46].
Understanding patterns in one's life is the starting point
for making changes based on these observations, and
new digital technologies support this endeavor. Indeed
recent forms of neoliberalism are intimately intertwined
with digital technologies, particularly in writings on
digital health, education, and workplace productivity.
These technologies afford the expansion of the networks
and spaces in which self-monitoring and self-management can be exercised, as well as offering new ways
28
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of gathering detailed data about individuals in realtime.
As a news article on the quantified self put it, practices
like self-tracking put people "in charge of their health"
[47]. This notion of control, of taking charge of one's
body, is an important attraction for many of those who
self-track. The data derived from self-tracking appear
to offer at least some degree of certainty that one's own
perceptions cannot and a greater degree of control over
the messiness and unpredictability of the fleshly body.
In neoliberal states, the discourses that valorize selftracking as part of self-management and control over
bodily disorder are moving into broader public arenas
and becoming part of government policy and corporate
endeavours to maximize worker productivity and (in the
U.S. context) to reduce expenditure on health insurance
coverage. The potential of promoting self-tracking has
become even more integral in a political environment in
which states are confronting fiscal crises and are seeking to withdraw from expenditure on welfare provision
systems [24], [25]. For example, self-tracking strategies
as one approach to reducing healthcare expenditure is
beginning to receive a high degree of attention in government policy and practice as part of the ideal of the
"digitally engaged patient" [26]. Quantifying the self as
part of top-down government and corporate enterprises
moves away from the focus on "self-knowledge" undertaken for personal reasons (voluntary self-surveillance)
that is central to the Quantified Self movement, to a
broader use of the concept that raises issues around the
involuntary or even coercive monitoring and surveillance
of citizens for external purposes [14].
Community and Prosumption
while some quantified selfers keep their data to themselves and are not interested in engaging in communitybased activities, others, particularly those who are
members of the Quantified Self movement, may also
value engaging in communities. An important dimension of the quantified self approach for many participants is the opportunity to share their data with others
or to aggregate their own data with others' data for the
same behavior. The regular meetups, conferences, and
discussion groups on the Quantified Self website all
attest to the desire of quantified selfers to engage in a
community of like-minded others, a kind of club for
self-trackers. when quantified selfers meet or engage
online with each other, the quantified self becomes
the quantified community, a place where others share
not only one's values and goals but possibly also their
data. The rhetoric of the Quantified Self website, for
example, often refers to the importance of "getting
more meaning from our personal data" [27] by sharing
insights and aggregating data with other members.
This drive towards "sharing your numbers" fits into
the wider discourse of content creation and sharing
that underpins many activities on web 2.0 social media
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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