Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Do You Find Self Tracking Useful Like Stephen Wolfram Does?

Posted by timothy on from the impress-your-doctor-with-a-preemptive-stool-sample dept.

New submitter Manzanita writes "The domain of personal analytics, or 'Quantified Self,' is rich with interesting things to measure and many hackers have started projects. But they will only take off if it is sufficiently easy to gather and use the data. Stephen Wolfram has collected and analyzed a lot of his personal data over the last 20 years, but that is far beyond what most of us have the time for. What do you find worth tracking? What is ripe for developing into a business?"

9 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Not tolerable for the average person by Dinghy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the average person is sat down and told how much of their life is spent in front of the TV or playing video games, I would expect them to have a breakdown. It's one thing to know "I watch TV for 2 hours a day" but it's completely different when you're told "In the last year you spent 732 hours (yay leap year) watching TV." It's bad enough when MMO's and Steam made it possible to see your playtime. :)

    1. Re:Not tolerable for the average person by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But I enjoy my play time. A moment enjoyed is never a moment wasted.

  2. Any studies yet that ... by quax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... indicate at what point collecting and analyzing personal data becomes indicative of a narcissistic personality disorder?

    1. Re:Any studies yet that ... by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Generally at the beginning, when one starts voluntarily aggregating it.

      It's one thing to write a journal, it's another to maintain data when not required to. The stuff I keep organized are either all required (taxes and other mandated record keeping) or things that are part of collections that I don't want to buy in redundancy (movies, books, music), or things that need records to ensure reliability and functionality (auto and house maintenance).

      Pictures we take are usually sorted just by date, and we occasionally browse through them, like a normal photo album. The only major exception to that is when we were house-hunting, and those pictures were functional records. Most of those house photos have been archived or deleted, unless we saw something cool that we'd want to do to our house.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  3. Memory pruning by DEFFENDER · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Part of a healthy mind is the ability to forget unimportant or no longer relevant information in favor of more recent and accurate things. If i tracked myself I wouldn't be able to forget the unimportant or push aside the less desirable. I would be governed by old data and held to means and modes of things that may not reflect current realities.

    This seems more like punishment than an aid.

    --
    Careful what you say around me.. I will assume you mean it.
  4. Nope by rinoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's the deal -- it's interesting as a sample. You might extrapolate a lot from his data. For a better sample tools just aren't there, except are they? A smartphone knows everything about your habits. I have been tracking any walk, jog, cycle, hike, or paddle I take with an app on my smartphone for about two years. Guess what I found out? I don't care enough to do anything with the data. I'm fit, I'm healthy and happy, I'm not an obsessed athlete. I get the idea and the nerdgasm of data, but I it doesn't help me enjoy life more.

  5. Re:Traffic patterns by m.ducharme · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Noted things down in his log, of course!

    --
    Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  6. Completely useless data by SilverJets · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's an exercise in gathering completely useless data.

    How many people on Slashdot still have emails they sent in 1990? 1991? 1992? How many of those emails that you still have are actually relevant today? Worse still, how relevant to today is it to know how many emails you sent in 1990, 1991 or 1992?

    Even more useless....number of keystrokes per day for the last 10 years.

    This guy is going to die someday and his wife and kids are going to toss all this crap right into the dustbin.

  7. If it's important to you, you should track it. by toddar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Personal analytics like anything else can become an obsession. I think tracking your caloric intake, weight, blood pressure, exercise and money spending are worthwhile for health and financial well being (I've lost 40 lbs this way). Writing down the names of people you meet (if you're bad at remembering names) is good for social happiness. Writing down yearly goals is probably good for achieving your definition of success. If you care about it, you should probably track it.