Datafied Life: Techno-Anthropology as a Site for Exploration and Experimentation

Techno-Anthropology recognizes the intertwining of technology with aims, needs, practices, and skills; ‘the techno’ and ‘the anthro’ are not only interconnected, but historically coconstituted. In this paper developments in ‘personal analytics’ are examined with the aim of proposing epistemological and methodological directions for Techno-Anthropological exploration. Personal analytics refers to the field of interactions that surrounds tracking various bodily and mental functions, including the analysis, visualization, and distribution of the data, thereby encompassing people’s involvements with measuring devices and data movements. By discussing findings from a self-tracking study that focused on heart-rate variability measurement, the article opens for scrutiny ways in which personal data can translate people’s selves into a format that is engaging and actionable. This, in turn, enables researchers to witness and critically assess a terrain where bodily and mental capacities, and life itself, are not taken as given, but become part of the processes of everyday sense-making and contestation.

[1]  Adam Arvidsson,et al.  A critical perspective , 2005 .

[2]  L. Floridi.  Technologies of the Self , 2012, Philosophy & Technology.

[3]  A. Feenberg.  Critical theory of technology and STS , 2015 .

[4]  Dawn Nafus,et al.  Stuck data, dead data, and disloyal data: the stops and starts in making numbers into social practices , 2014 .

[5]  J. Krige.  How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology , 2006 .

[6]  M. Pantzar,et al.  The heart of everyday analytics: emotional, material and practical extensions in self-tracking market , 2015 .

[7]  G. Wellner.  The Quasi-Face of the Cell Phone: Rethinking Alterity and Screens , 2014 .

[8]  Melanie Swan,et al.  Sensor Mania! The Internet of Things, Wearable Computing, Objective Metrics, and the Quantified Self 2.0 , 2012, J. Sens. Actuator Networks.

[9]  Lynn Holden,et al.  Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology , 2007 .

[10]  Jeanette Edwards,et al.  Technologized Images, Technologized Bodies , 2022 .

[11]  Jeanette Edwards,et al.  Picturing the brain inside, revealing the illness outside: a comparison of the different meanings attributed to brain scans by scientists and patients , 2010 .

[12]  A. Arvidsson.  The ethical economy: Towards a post-capitalist theory of value , 2009 .

[13]  S. Roberts.  The reception of my self-experimentation , 2012 .

[14]  T. Ingold.  The perception of the environment : essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill , 2000 .

[15]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions , 2006 .

[16]  Ken Anderson,et al.  Numbers Have Qualities Too: Experiences with Ethno‐Mining , 2009 .

[17]  Lars Botin,et al.  What is Techno-Anthropology? , 2013 .

[18]  Francisco Klauser,et al.  From self-tracking to smart urban infrastructures: towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on Big Data , 2014 .

[19]  D. Lupton.  The digitally engaged patient: Self-monitoring and self-care in the digital health era , 2013 .

[20]  M. Swan.  Health 2050: The Realization of Personalized Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self, and the Participatory Biocitizen , 2012, Journal of personalized medicine.

[21]  Deborah Lupton,et al.  Understanding the Human Machine [Commentary] , 2013, IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag..

[22]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Wearable augmentations:Imaginaries of the informed body , 2010 .

[23]  Deborah Lupton.  Quantified sex: a critical analysis of sexual and reproductive self-tracking using apps , 2015, Culture, health & sexuality.

[24]  N. Rose,et al.  Governing economic life , 1990 .

[25]  Hybridity and Social Responsibility In Techno-Anthropology and Engineering Education , 2013 .

[26]  Torben Elgaard Jensen.  Techno Anthropology: A new move in science and technology studies , 2013 .

[27]  D. Boyd,et al.  CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA , 2012 .

[28]  Deborah Lupton,et al.  Self-Tracking Modes: Reflexive Self-Monitoring and Data Practices , 2014 .

[29]  R. Ericson,et al.  The surveillant assemblage. , 2000, The British journal of sociology.

[30]  Stacey O. Irwin.  Technological Other/Quasi Other: Reflection on Lived Experience , 2005 .

[31]  M. Swan.  Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models: An Examination of Health Social Networks, Consumer Personalized Medicine and Quantified Self-Tracking , 2009, International journal of environmental research and public health.