You Are Your Data: Self-Tracking Practices and Concepts of Data

Abstract

In this chapter I examine the concepts and uses of data as they are expressed in representations of self-tracking (otherwise known as life logging, the quantified self or personal informatics).Self-tracking is not only a technology of the self, but it is also a data practice. Self-tracking may be further conceptualised as a data practice that produces data assemblages. Most recently and noticeably, detailed quantifiable data has become valorised above other forms of information about one’s life, health and wellbeing. I will discuss the valorisation of quantification as a self-tracking data practice, but I also go on to examine alternative data practices with which some people are experimenting as part of self-tracking strategies.

Keywords: self-tracking,quantified self, life logging, sociology, data practices, critical data studies, digital technologies