Chapter 4 The Self of the Quantified Self

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary society is characterized by extreme acceleration (Rosa, 2010). Time has become a scarce resource and individuals are forced to adhere to the demands of speediness. This condition is connected to the increased performance now required in many areas of daily life, an increase so profound that some authors refer to ours as a “doping society.” This chapter argues that the practice of quantification exponentially increases the “managerializing” of the user. In this sense, the quantified-self (QS) can be thought of as something that helps people to organize their activities in the manner of the market. Individuals thus become self-entrepreneurs who, in keeping with the standard aims of neoliberalism, make use of their collected data in a fashion analogous to the way results are determined in a corporation’s Research & Development department. The self becomes an assortment of analyses by which measures of behaviors and habits are made, all in the name of producing an “objective report” on the user’s characteristics. The ultimate aim of all this is to improve certain parts of life so as to increase and optimize our productivity.