ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how futures are imagined through self-tracking and personal data. These devices, platforms and data are bound up in a contemporary societal moment that Adams, Murphy and Clarke characterize as being in a ‘state of anticipation, of thinking and living toward the future’. The data can be sent directly to a smartphone or other device. It is acknowledged as a major advance in interdisciplinary medical and engineering research, has won numerous international awards and has been widely reported globally across science, technology and popular media channels. From a social sciences perspective emerging technologies can be thought of as having various characteristics. They tend to be ‘constituted as a category of thing in influential public, policy and industry narratives and news media’, usually within a narrative of technological innovation and for human good.
