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Rigging Up Baby
theodp writes "Over at Fast Company, Rebecca Greenfield explores the rise of extreme baby monitoring. 'In the imminent future,' writes Greenfield, 'any curious parent with an iPhone will have access to helpful analytics, thanks to the rise of wearable gadgets for babies. Following the success of self-trackers for grown-ups, like Jawbone and Fitbit, companies like Sproutling, Owlet, and Mimo want to quantify your infants.' Devices connect to a baby via boot, anklet, or onesie, and record heart rate, breathing patterns, temperature, body position, and the ambient conditions of the room. While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents, Greenfield reports the real holy grail is the data garnered from tracking, which some companies plan to share with researchers.
'We're creating the largest data set of infant health data,' says Owlet co-founder Jordan Monroe."
Unlike a basic $35 baby-monitor, the $250 Owlet bootie and accompanying app can alert parents if anything serious has gone wrong, like if a kid stops breathing, or if his heart stops beating.
This XKCD comes to mind for some reason.
Babymonitor App, 4.0 stars, 4 reviews
Three five star reviews, then one one star review. "App did not warn me when baby died."
Want a slightly more serious take on it?
For the first 10 months of her life, her mother, Yasmin, kept detailed records of Elle's sleep patterns, feedings, and diaper changes, noting the data points with a pencil and paper on a clipboard. A few months in, she digitized the logs, graphed the data, and became a more knowledgeable parent.
Unfortunately for the Lucero family's sleeping habits, Yasmin never found a definitive answer. Per the data, Elle was just fussy.
That last line accurately sums up every infant I've ever had in my charge. Not sure what pattern you could discern from graphing all of this data, if my experiences are any guide it would make for one hell of a random number generator. I doubt one can find a better entropy source than a newborns sleeping "schedule". ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I know this will probably get lost in the comments but, when my mom isn't home I like to go into her garden, cover myself in dirt, and pretend I'm a carrot.
What, no burp duration or fecal viscosity histograms? Pathetic.
Oh how did we ever survive without constantly knowing our kids' whereabouts? Do you remember the times? When we were scared shitless because little Timmy could not be tracked down via GPS? When kids actually could have secrets from their parents? Nothing spells "I love you, dear child" like calling when he's making out with his first love.
But I see the upside of it. Kids that are constantly monitored, prodded and nagged by parents will more likely develop a heavy resentment for total surveillance, and they will early in their life start to develop counter strategies.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That was my first thought as well. Babies make a lot of weird, though normal, noises. Just listening to them sleep can be anxiety-inducing. Was that gurgling normal, or a real problem? He stopped breathing agai...oh no, he's OK. What is that awful sound he's making?
Monitoring and interpreting even more data is going to be daunting and nail-biting. Unless they're sick and need the monitoring, I would not recommend monitoring healthy babies.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.