The Quantified Self

In her work, my professor Billie Sandberg often raises issues around quantification and measurement in organizational context as an ideological act that merits critique, one of the key markers of a neo-liberal regime.  I need to spend some more time with her writing on it, and with theories of neo-liberalism that she draws on, because I hesitate on the points on quantification.  I think of quantification as being useful, worth doing in all sorts of contexts, and that quantification per se is ideologically neutral.  Even a radical or revolutionary initiative would want to draw on quantifiable measures for analysis, forecasting, and assessment. Knowing that I need to spend some time with this, an article she did with Thomas Catlaw on the Quantified Self rose high on my reading list.

In my experience, the most common form of this movement is in health and wellness data.  Think Fitbits, mindfulness apps like Headspace, or the Noom weight loss app. They all collect data about you, shoot it to the cloud, and repackage it in ways designed to help you achieve some goal—fitness, mindfulness, etc.  In many cases, the apps incorporate gamification—prizes and awards for achieving milestones—and a social dimension.  I tend to think of this movement as being a cult limited to coastal tech communities, but I have to admit I’ve been using an app called Strava to measure my walks and runs, and I’m connected on it with a few friends in California.  I’m not immune.

Sandberg and Catlaw analyze this movement in terms of “practices of the self, which constitute the modalities by which the self acts on the self” and as a contemporary form of historical practices of “self-care” designed to prepare elites for governing. The collection and use of information about the self to manage the self reflects a pervasive value of entrepreneurship—the individual takes themselves on a product to be developed, optimized and improved. Their research involves analyzing a number of video logs posted on the Quantified Self website (Homepage - Quantified Self) to identify the goal of the self-government activity, the ethical substance (the target of their efforts),  the means through which that subjectification occurs, and the methods.  One significant observation is that while the tools collect physical data, the purpose of the contributors is generally to gain greater control over their minds.  The vlogs also bring out that this is a very solitary pursuit, directed towards control of the self, for the self.

Sandberg and Catlaw are interested in public administration and governance, and come to this work as part of their study of the influence and ideology of technology and use of influence in government, but one of the really interesting things about the paper is that they are identifying precursors to a potential direction in governance.  “Though these highly personalized practices do not (yet) purposefully crowd-source data back into the cloud for state-driven big-data analytics, we see subjects who are beginning the process of self-governing suitable for precisely such governmental practice.”  At this stage in their work they leave open the possibility that these practices may provide opportunities for liberation, for “wresting our own mundane, biological beings from the relentlessness of the neoliberal market,” but the skepticism is apparent, and there’s some earlier work they did on the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive that I haven’t read yet that may provide more evidence of current or imminent use of these tools.  When I think of the Trump Administration, it seems more likely that that group would have delegated this work of information-control and manipulating self regulation to private sector ancillaries.  Which is consistent with privatizing trends that Billie addresses in her work.

One section of the paper makes a fascinating aside to Weber and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. One of Weber’s major arguments was that religious asceticism provided a foundation for a secular, utilitarian value that elevated labor and self-sacrifice, through which a person developed themselves into an effective economic subject.  I found it very useful to see the line drawn between that concept and Foucault’s ideas about creation of the subject and self-discipline, and then for Catlaw and Sandberg to show how these contemporary practices continue and extend these foundational Western practices. Technology it would seem keeps making our society capable of becoming more intensely what it already is.

Thomas J. Catlaw & Billie Sandberg (2018) The Quantified Self and the Evolution of Neoliberal Self-Government: An Exploratory Qualitative Study, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 40:1, 3-22, DOI: 10.1080/10841806.2017.1420743