Self-Tracking
About a decade ago, I learned about the Quantified Self movement and thought about how liberating it would be for my device to track everything it could about me and then come up with ideas and suggestions on what I could do to live better. I was reminded about this after listening to an interview from 2014 by Ross Roberts with Sam Altman on Ross’ podcast, Econtalk. Altman and Roberts talked about wearables and it made me realize that the promise of wearables has yet to be delivered.
Our devices are gathering lots of data but either the insights aren’t being shared with us, they haven’t yet been mined, or they can’t actually be gleaned. I’d have hoped that by now we would have seen more breakthroughs.
Sure, Apple Watch can give information about arterial fibrillation and Oura can measure heart rate variability, but what about when to drink, or what to eat now, or how I compare to others?
That said, we’re only 2–3 years away from even better continuous glucose monitors. Even continuous ketone monitors are going to entering market soon. These, combined with taking photos of food, might be a game changer for personalized diet tracking and medicine.
