What is lifelogging? Well Lifestream Blog puts it into perspective by saying “Lifelogging is the process of tracking personal data generated by our own behavioral activities.”
As technology moves forward our obsession for it moves forward as well so it doesn’t surprise me how popular it is becoming. These tools or gadgets come in many different forms from web services such as Daytum, to gadgets and sensors such as google glasses and fitness tracking watches, to mobile apps that count steps or can track sleep patterns.
Photo by Handbag.com (License CC 3.0)
Am I worried about life-logging? Leaving a trail of my life online?
I have never really thought about it. When I do think about it, nothing comes to mind because I don’t use any life-logging or quantified self tools, except for maybe Facebook if you can count that as one. It seems like it is the only ‘life-logging’ tool I use because of the way it saves your activity. I can go back and check posts I have made and commented on from when I first signed up in 2011 and it is very easy to see the difference.
I decided to track my life-logging for a day to see how much I really logged. Not that I was overly concerned just thought it would be an interesting idea, even though I can basically only track it with Facebook, which makes this similar to the logging I used for my Identity Map. Anyway here is a donut graph of my time spent logging for the day (which is really boring).
See! Boring…. Because I don’t use any gadgets or have any apps on my phone that can be classified as a ‘life-logging’ tool I have had to base this off of social media, which, in a way is a form of life-logging and the only one that I use.
I guess in a way life-logging is like keeping an online journal of self data from your own behavioural activities, whether it is through commenting or posting on Facebook or using an app from the app store that will track how many steps you take a day and give you goals to break, or an app that tracks each night of your sleeping so you can track a sleeping pattern. Is this a good thing? I think yes, but in a way no. Yes because the forward motion of technology makes it easier and easier to live each day by basically giving us many of what used to be a challenge or a hassle on a plate. But no because I think there is a lot of privacy and ethical problems that people will find without giving it any second thought.
Anyway, if you have read this blog and you’re thinking you just jump right into some self quantified activities straight away, Daytum is a cool website you can look into to begin with where you can log data each day to keep a track of it and share with others.
Lifestream Blog (2015) Lifelogging/Quantified Self, Available at:http://lifestreamblog.com/lifelogging/ (Accessed: 23rd April 2015).
Peter Gascoines IAB260 Rise (and hopefully not) Fall 