Author(s):
- Yang, Yeesheen
Abstract:
In the information age, we are offered a myriad of options through which to fulfill the exhortation to “know thyself.” Tech-based initiatives—including Google Calico, which seeks to address the problems of aging and death, and Quantified Self, which looks to prompt self-improvement— offer that knowledge in the form of data. This essay explores the notion of the algorithmic body—a body built from data—and its roots in a history of projects that attempt to escape some of the fundamental aspects of the human condition, including mortality.
Documentation:
https://doi.org/10.1525/boom.2014.4.4.80
References:
Saving the Quantified Self: How we come to know ourselves now
- The Quantified Self website can be found here: http://quanti fiedself.com.
- 2 Self trackers have their own history and legacy. Many note that before smartphones, there were pens and paper, which Benja- min Franklin used in his obsessive daily self-chronicling.
3 Paul LaFontaine’s writing on his self-study can be found here: http://quantselflafont.com/2014/07/13/improvement-results- in-upset-recovery/.
4 Deborah Lupton, ‘‘Beyond the Quantified Self: the Reflexive Self-Monitoring Self,’’ This Sociological Life, http://simply sociology.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/beyond-the-quantified- self-the-reflexive-monitoring-self/.
5 Larry Page, ‘‘Calico Announcement,’’ 18 September 2013, http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2013/09/calico-announce ment.html.
6 Gregory Ferenstein and Rip Empson, ‘‘WTF is Calico, and Why Does Google Think Its Mysterious New Company Can Defy Aging?’’ TechCrunch, 19 September 2013, http://techcrunch. com/2013/09/19/wtf-is-calico-and-why-does-google-think-its- mysterious-new-company-can-defy-aging/.
7 Alistair Barr, ‘‘Google’s New Moonshot Project,’’ The Wall Street Journal, 27 July 2014.
8 Dominic Basuto, ‘‘Google Wants to Make You Immortal and ObamaCare Will Pay For It,’’ Washington Post, 8 October 2013.
9 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 2.
10 Ibid., 3.
11 PEW Research, ‘‘Living to 120 and Beyond: Americans’ Views on Aging, Medical Advances, and Radical Life Extension,’’ 6 August 2013.