August | 2014 | ShoalBehaviour

An important article, an important blog and an important and insidious trend in modern living.

Great blog post by Mark Carrigan of sociologicalimagination.org:

He starts off with personal experiance of using a tracking device:

Earlier this week I finally bought the Jawbone Up24 after weeks of deliberation. I’d got bored with the Nike Fuel Band, losing interest in the opaque ‘fuel points’ measurement and increasingly finding it to be an unwelcome presence on my wrist. I’d also been ever more aware of how weird my sleep patterns have become in the past couple of years, cycling between rising early and staying up late, with little discernible rhyme or reason. The idea of tracking my sleep in a reasonably accurate fashion, using degree of bodily movement as a cypher for the depth of sleep, appealed to me on a reflexive level.

This experiance of being nudged by wearable tech makes him consider how intrusive wearable tech be if were made manditory and used to enforce behaviour.