This week in lifelogging: grandma was a lifelogger, forming habits and Neurocam introduction

Lifelogging could be the basis for family legacy

Lifelogging is transcending the generations. As Kitty Irelend discovers, “Grandma at 16 wasn’t that much different from me at 16” – boys, food, media consumption, location tracking (with the boys) and so on. As she unveils Grandma’s diary, Kitty realizes that Grandma was a much better lifelogger than she is. Grandma noted down the tiniest details in words and from analyzing them with what was missing from the lifelogs, Kitty could piece together the life of her grandma when she wasn’t even born – “A young girl in a small western town during wartime falls in love. With little parental supervision, she eats her meals in diners, goes to movies and rides around in cars with dozens of boys”. As Kitty mentions, details make up stories, and stories make up lives. Are we ready to leave a legacy for our grandchildren and will they be able to comprehend the lives we lived?

Read more: Kitty Ireland: Grandma was a Lifelogger and Auto life logging for non-QSers

The wearable dilemma: forming habits first

From handwritten lifelogs by Grandma to lifelogging using wearable tech gadgets. Perhaps because of the rise in demand for easy lifelogging devices, we see a myriad of wearable tech gadgets that are available in the market already. Just last week, the founders of Narrative, Misfit and Adafruit were at Engadget Expand 2013, and in the video above, you’d find them discussing about the state of wearable technology today. According to Adafruit, “Getting people to want to wear things all the time — whether it’s on or off is a huge stumbling block”. And as the discussion delves deeper, many agree that wearable technology has to look good, does something for people, is effortless enough to makes every one want to wear it everyday, and built into their habitual lifestyles. What do you think it will take for wearable tech devices to really enter the fabrics of our lives?

SEE ALSO:  3 outlandish ways technology wants to be a little more human for you

Read more: The wearable dilemma: forming habits first, then building ecosystems and Wearable Technology Roundup: 5 Creative Kickstarters For The Gadget Enthusiast

Lifelogging with Neurocam

It really isn’t difficult to see that the wearable tech industry is on an uprising trend with new devices appearing on the web almost every single day. In the picture above, we see a very interesting wearable camera called the Neurocam, which detects your emotions and analyzes your brainwaves to automatically record moments of interest. This headset includes EEG sensors that scans the brain for correlative spikes in interest. With an EEG data value of above 60 (on a scale of 0-100), an “interest” is detected and the phone’s camera starts recording to generate five-second GIFs. The company behind Neurocam also has plans to enable emotion tagging to scenes and include an “effect function” that will automatically overlay filters and visual effects on clips based on emotions. In future, they see potential use cases for city planning, store development and are exploring other possibilities. Are they able to generate an interest in you?

Read more: Neurocam Scans Your Brain, Records Your Interests and Facebook likes wearable technology, but the tech’s not quite ready to like back

 The right to your own data

With all the wearable tech gadgets mentioned above, you can now track your mind, body, and behaviors to learn more about yourself—and realize more of your own potential. Indeed, as mentioned in this article, the boom in the wearable tech industry has to be coupled with the providence of useful information. And with this, the writer makes a distinction between ownership over our data and the right for us to use personal data. To her, ownership of data presents the narrow view of preventing others from using it and privacy is a negative right because it obliges others to leave you alone. However, in order to truly make sense of our personal data, one has to release a portion of information to the firm’s algorithms and cloud services that generate a useful report of what is being recorded by a self-tracker. Therefore, it seems to the writer that a “right to use” our data is a more accurate representation of what is and should happen in the Quantified Self movement. What do you think?

SEE ALSO:  Have you heard about the Internet of Self?

Read more: You are your data and Tracking personal data for better living: an intro to the “Quantified Self”

If you enjoyed this post, you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter! PS – Have you read about our name change, funding and our official shipping date? Read our CEO letter here