How should we use data to improve our lives? - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine - 0 views
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The Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer argue that people do not appreciate the real cost of a long commute. And especially when that commute is unpredictable, it takes a toll on our daily well-being.
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imagine if we shared our commuting information so that we could calculate the average commute from various locations around a city. When the growing family of four pulls up to a house for sale for in New Jersey, the listing would indicate not only the price and the number of bathrooms but also the rush-hour commute time to Midtown Manhattan. That would be valuable information to have, since buyers could realistically factor the tradeoffs of remaining in a smaller space closer to work against moving to a larger space and taking on a longer commute.
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In a cover story for the New York Times Magazine, the writer Gary Wolf documented the followers of “The Data-Driven Life,” programmers, students, and self-described geeks who track various aspects of their lives. Seth Roberts does a daily math exercise to measure small changes in his mental acuity. Kiel Gilleade is a "Body Blogger" who shares his heart rate via Twitter. On the more extreme end, Mark Carranza has a searchable database of every idea he's had since 1984. They're not alone. This community continues to thrive, and its efforts are chronicled at a blog called the Quantified Self, co-founded by Wolf and Kevin Kelly.
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If you've ever asked Nike+ to log your runs or given Google permission to keep your search history, you've participated in a bit of self-tracking. Now that more people have location-aware smartphones and the Web has made data easy to share, personal data is poised to become an important tool to understand how we live, and how we all might live better. One great example of this phenomenon in action is the site Cure Together, which allows you to enter your symptoms—for, say, "anxiety" or "insomnia"—and the various remedies you've tried to feel better. One thing the site does is aggregate this information and present the results in chart form. Here is the chart for depression:
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Instead of being isolated in your own condition, you can now see what has worked for others. The same principle is at work at the site Fuelly, where you can "track, share, and compare" your miles per gallon and see how efficient certain makes and models really are.
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Businesses are also using data tracking to spur their employees to accomplishing companywide goals: Wal-Mart partnered with Zazengo to help employees track their "personal sustainability" actions such as making a home-cooked meal or buying local produce. The app Rescue Time, which records all of the activity on your computer, gives workers an easy way to account for their time. And that comes in handy when you want to show the boss how efficient telecommuting can be.