Death by a thousand data points
This article is part of Big Squirrel’s “Small Bites” series – short, easily digestible musings from our team, designed to get you thinking.
In a poetic critique of the quantified-self era, Ruby Justice Thelot laments the dehumanizing effects of obsessive body tracking (sleep rings, step counters, etc.). She warns that pursuing optimization may sacrifice the essence of being alive. Her essay argues that while we seek control through data, we may be moving toward an inhuman existence. Sensation becomes steps, joy becomes a calorie count, and rest becomes REM percentages.
Read the original article here: Lure of the (Oura) Rings
Why does this matter now?
Technology has recently gotten a bad rap. You’ve heard it: social media’s influence on anxiety and depression, smartphone addiction. These things are real, but technology has always promised richer experiences.
When do we evaluate when a promise under-delivers?
Agree or not with the sentiment in the poetry linked above– the sentiment exists and it exists for a reason. So how do we bring back the tension between humanity and technology? How do we ensure our solutions enrich human experiences by fueling curiosity, delight and energy? How do we safeguard against eroding experiences by giving people the feeling their humanity is being reduced to metrics and data points?