Bodies, Numbers and Politics: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Quantified Self’ Movement

• In Event: How Do STS Studies Translate Numbers: Knowledge, Theory, Method

Abstract

With the motto, “self-knowledge through numbers,” the Quantified Self (QS) movement seemed to be fast on the heels of other (neo)liberal technoscientific projects that posit the individual as the site of action, and numbers and quantification as the means for achieving Objectivity and Truth in the service of productivity, and efficiency. This depiction is not wrong. Created in 2007 by two influential technolibertarians from Wired magazine, the ‘Quantified Self’ (QS) movement encourages the use of technology to track, monitor and generate bodily data. Numbers present the key to a previously unknown reality allowing members to scientifically perfect themselves and their lives. The QS movement’s enormous growth is testified not only in its increasing membership but also in the mounting number of companies investing in this area.

Yet, I argue, an analysis of the Quantified Self movement betrays a more nuanced and complicated view of the political commitments that quantifying practices of its self-declared members. Drawing upon ethnographic data and interviews with members of London’s ‘Quantified Self’ group—the largest in Europe— I trace the early discourses that drove and justified the growth of the QS movement, and show how the movement’s cohesiveness and identity scattered as the practices and technologies underlying it went mainstream. I show how QS was, to some degree a victim of its own success: as it went mainstream the practices and subjects through with, and from which, numbers were produced changed and became distinct entities. This, in turn, transformed the ethos and identity of the QS subject. This paper contributes to our understanding of the politics of numbers and numerical production and their entanglements with
technoscientific movements.

Author

• Ana Viseu, Universidade Europeia