Future World Seen from Self-tracking

Abstract

Modern self-tracking is an extension of traditional self-introspection, as well as a novel praxis using digital technology that has advanced since the 2010s. In the “Quantified Self” community, not only health and fitness, but also the invention of new lifestyles and aesthetics are discussed, suggesting the hybridity of devices, humans, and data rather than the reductionist view in which the self as the subject treats the data as the object. Although self-tracking tends to be criticized as reductionism, biomedicalization, healthism, and personalization of social problems in the field of sociology, we emphasize the importance of the collective practice of users who produce the individualized self-knowledge (N-of-1) and its similarity to Toji-sha research in Japan.