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The quantified self - Gary Wolf

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TED Talk

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At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf gives a 5-min intro to an intriguing new pastime: using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending -- just about everything in daily life you can measure -- in gloriously geeky detail. Journalist Gary Wolf spends his days in pursuit of the most fascinating things. As a contributing editor at Wired, he's written about technology, mushroom hunters, venture capitalists

Wolf observes about sensors and the data they gather: “We think of these tools as pointing outward, as windows, and I’d just like to invite you to think of them as also turning inward and becoming mirrors.” Using them as mirrors, he believes, will help us “get to know ourselves better.” There’s no doubt that tools like those he describes can help us amass detailed data about ourselves—but how effective do you think we’ll be in using that data to change ourselves and/or the world around us?

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