Socializing Truman

When we last left our hero, he was busy bookmarking websites, and downloading apps to his iphone and android devices, gathering information focused on multiple facets of his life. Truman, and his lovely wife Meryl, were keeping track of all kinds of personal data, from daily blood sugar counts, to calories consumed, to amounts and types of exercise. And then the light fell out of the sky...

Personal Informatics.
The focus on quantifying our lives has quickly grown beyond the accurate capture of data elements, and is growing into the analysis of our lives, as we attempt to generate meaning from these data.  We can now capture and visualize our music listening habits, social footprints, reading history, fiscal responsibility, energy consumption patterns, things that probably shouldn't be tracked around our parents, even the activity of your mouse.  Withings created the first WiFi scale that can to the Internet, and save weight, fat and BMI data automatically.  A company called Toumaz is creating WiFi-enabled wearable monitors that provide continuous  monitoring in hospitals.  Some wonderful folks at MIT created a site for us all to share this data.  With all this data being captured, our digital wake is growing daily.  But what does it all mean?

Outsourcing Accountability.
As people started generating meaning from this data, an interesting thing happened.  We're uncovering amazing insights about ourselves.  We can rise above our own wakes and look for trends, and paths, and directions.  ...and some of this information is really hard to accept - I weigh more than I want, I'm progressing slower than I wanted, I don't know what to do.  One reaction is to outsource our accountability.

The Bright Side of Communities.
At the same time, we're also taking responsibility for not just ourselves, but for our communities.  The word "community" is derived from two Latin terms that mean "with/together"  and  "gift".   We're re-learning the value of sharing stuff,  this time within a digital context.  While Facebook and Twitter kick-started the broader appeal of digital sharing, interest-specific communities are creating their own sites, focused on sharing data.

MapMyFitness is a diverse set of applications and sites all built around a fitness community.  Taking the personal measurements to the next step, these sites provides tools and communities, and create a community-driven source for  fitness content, maps, and advice.  Konamoxt built on their health-focused community they called Sweat365, and extended it to help organizations develop online program and communities for their employees.  Their Healthy Corp program helps incent employees to engage in positive behavior changing habits, anchored in existing wellness programs. 

Healthcare-focused communities such as TheCarrot, CureTogether and PatientsLikeMe provide users not only the ability to track this wellness-related data, community members can share their data with their community, helping users find people who share similar conditions, and share information to help make better healthcare decisions.

Where to Next, Truman?
This sharing of data  certainly has its dark side as well, best captured in Phillip K. Dick's classic short story, "Minority Report".  On one hand, I can envision a world where my  insurance company and my doctors are looking at the same information I've generated, where my doctor helps me set up a plan to achieve specific goals, where my insurance company offers incentives when I achieve goals.  It's a world where a restaurant shows me customized menus based on that same information, where I can always receive instant feedback on the impact of different food choices on my body.  It's a world where my favorite sporting good store can create a specific coupon or incentive as I walk into the store because I let that store know I'm a member of the ILoveRunning.com community. 

On the other hand is the world where credit card companies are mining the same data, and selling that data without my control.  A world where pharmaceutical companies are notified when I eat at The Cheesecake Factory so they can send me information about Lipitor.  A world where predictive analysis of my checkins to Gowalla combined with my spending habits can create specific coupons  that I may or may not want.

Which world will become reality?  In the next article in this series, we'll discuss where this trend is heading.  Tim talks about "publicy" which we'll look at, and we'll also look at how game dynamics are defining the next step in this evolution.   As always, I'd appreciate your insights and feedback.