Journalist Query/Germany: Kaveh Kooroshy of Der Tagesspiegel

Quantified Self Research & Media
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Posting this query for a German journalist. Please respond here or via email to Kaveh Kooroshy kkooroshy@hotmail.com)

By “congress” Kaveh is referring, I think, to the upcoming QS Conference in Amsterdam, November 26/27 2011
http://quantifiedself.com/conference/Amsterdam-2011/
This isn’t widely announced yet, so please don’t forward the link until we post on the blog.

THANKS!
Gary

–

[quote]my name is Kaveh Kooroshy and I am Journalist at the newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” located in Berlin, Germany. I have become aware through media reports about the Quantified Self Congress and would like to ask you for an interview on that issue. I would appreciate it a lot, if you could answear me the following questions:

  • Quantified Self tries to collect as much as possible data about one self in order to get a true picture of yourselves. Is that right?

  • Is the aim of Quantified Self, to put all available data in a relationship to each other?

  • When the data is collected, how do you interpret these data?

  • The health industries has an interest on collected data. How can be in your point of view assured, that the data is not abused?

  • Can the data collected substitute perceptions one has about his feelings?

  • Is the method aiming helping all people, or is it supposed to be restricted on people, who suffer certain diseases (e.g. migraine)?

  • Are all kinds of data important (e.g. my feelings, social contacts), or are there also data, which can be neglected?

  • Which data, in your respect, are the most relevant?

  • Do you have financial calculations on the costs, if some one would like to buy all the apps to collect all kinds of data, which are most relevant?

  • How do you see the future, will there be some kind of system, which integrates all the measuring instruments for the data collection?

  • If I could qoute you, would it be correct, to call you one of the organizers of the congress?

Thank you again,

sincerely,

Kaveh Kooroshy
kkooroshy@hotmail.com

Der Tagesspiegel
Politk-Redaktion
Tel.: +49 (0)30 29021-14902
Mobil: +49 (0)163 987 15 32[/quote]

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[quote]- Quantified Self tries to collect as much as possible data about one self in order to get a true picture of yourselves. Is that right?[/quote]The core of the quantified self idea is that every individual who participates makes the decisions for themselves.

[quote]- When the data is collected, how do you interpret these data?[/quote]The core is curiosity. You make a graph with the data and look whether they are patterns. You try to explain them.
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2010/08/13/arithmetic-and-butter/ is a post by Seth Roberts about how he found that eating butter increases his intelligence.

[quote]- Is the method aiming helping all people, or is it supposed to be restricted on people, who suffer certain diseases (e.g. migraine)?[/quote]Whether or not eating butter will improve your individual intelligence is a question that interesting for all people.
Other questions target on specific illnesses.

We however live in a society where many people has some health problems. Whether you are overweight, have asthma, diabetes or migraine, for most of the common health problems there are clear variables that you can track.

[quote]- Do you have financial calculations on the costs, if some one would like to buy all the apps to collect all kinds of data, which are most relevant?[/quote]Buying normal scale and noting the numbers on a piece of paper is cheap.
Buying a Withings WiFi Body Scale which automatically records the data to your computer or smart phone costs on the other hand $159.00.

[quote]- Are all kinds of data important (e.g. my feelings, social contacts), or are there also data, which can be neglected?[/quote]That depends completely on what the individual cares about.
Different people prioritize different data.

[quote]my name is Kaveh Kooroshy and I am Journalist at the newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” located in Berlin, Germany. [/quote]In case you want a face to face interview, I’m also from Berlin.

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My answers interlaced below:

[quote][quote]
my name is Kaveh Kooroshy and I am Journalist at the newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” located in Berlin, Germany. I have become aware through media reports about the Quantified Self Congress and would like to ask you for an interview on that issue. I would appreciate it a lot, if you could answear me the following questions:
- Quantified Self trys to collect as much as possible data about one self in order to get a true picture of yourselve. Is that right?[/quote]

Our goal is to explore the new tools of self-tracking and self-reflection that are becoming available, to find their value for ourselves.

[quote]
- Is the aim of Quantified Self, to put all available data in a relationship to each other?[/quote]

This is a fantasy: there is no such thing as “all data” and even if there were, the elements of such a universal collection could not be put “in a relationship to each other.” Data is another way of saying “observations.” All observations are partial. But many new types of data are becoming accessible to us, about many different parts of life: sleep, activity, diet, cognition, emotion. Just to name a few. And many people interested in what we call “the quantified self” are trying to figure out the relationship between two or more sets of data. For instance, how does diet affect sleep? How does emotion affect activity? Etc.

[quote]
- When the data is collected, how do you interprete these data?[/quote]

The simplest way to interpret data is to look at the numbers and ask: is there a trend up or down. This can be done with a graph, or simply by eyeballing the numbers. There are many more complicated ways, of course!

[quote]
- The health industrie has an interest on collected data. How can be in your point of view assured, that the data is not abused?[/quote]

There is no such assurance. In fact, there is a guarantee: powerful tools will be powerfully abused.

No, this is a false choice. Data - or observations - is a type of perception. You might want to ask: when we focus on one type of perception, to we sacrifice other types? I think the answer is clearly yes. It isn’t possible to attend to every type of perception at once. But, sometimes different types of perception can work in concert. For instance, in learning to play a musical instrument, we both listen to instruction, watch other people, and practice for ourselves. Data is just another mode of perception, and so it both competes with and supports other manners of observation and learning.

This is a broad cultural shift to learning to use data for personal reasons, and it will effect everybody, much as the spread of literacy did.

[quote]
- Are all kinds of data important (e.g. my feelings, social contacts), or are there also data, which can be neglected?[/quote]

That’s too large a question for me to have opinions about.

Your question can’t be answered without specifying: relevant to what?

No.

No, that’s impossible, unless you consider computing, in general, to be “an instrument.” In which case, yes, the system that integrates data collection is “the computer.” But remember that computers can be in toys, in phones, etc.

I’m the co-founder of The Quantified Self, which is an international collaboration among users and makers of self-tracking tools. And yes, I’m also the co-organizer of the QS European Conference in Amsterdam on November 26/27, 2011.

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The article got published:

It’s a factual summary with a few strange translations but overall it’s quite okay.
It ends with saying:
“Brave new world” :wink: