ABSTRACT
The production of personal data through digital self-tracking involves people using and engaging creatively and analytically with wearable, digital, mobile and locative sensor and computing technologies to record data and quantify and analyse various aspects of human activity. This includes walking, running, cycling and other forms of movement, heart rate, sleep, calorie intake and expenditure, stress levels and much more. The origins of the rise of digital self-tracking lie in the commitment to the measurement, monitoring and sharing of personal data in self-experimenting communities that indulge in technology-oriented do-it-yourself biology, such as biohackers and the Quantified Self members. In recent years self-tracking has become ubiquitous in everyday life contexts as well as being tested and used – to varying degrees of success – in wider settings, for example, health, educational programmes, efficiency management in work life, in the management of personal relationships, in postnatal care, and in caring for and tracking the movements of pets.
