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At The New Inquiry, Moira Weigel writes about the rise of personal activity trackers such as FitBit, which electronically monitor and quantify users’ physical activity twenty-four hours a day. Their ostensible purpose is to harness information technology to help users be physically healthy, but Weigel argues that they simply extend the logic of labor into the realm of personal well-being:
Like confession and therapy, activity trackers promise to improve us by confronting us with who we are when we are not paying attention. The difference is that they produce clarity constantly, in real time. And they tell us exactly what to do. Every hour or so the “Chatter” feature on my 2014 Ultra sends a new instruction crawling across its screen. Walk me, it pleads when I sit for too long at my desk. Burn it, gorgeous! it cheers me on the treadmill. It makes it possible to see every problem as one we can tackle through activity. FitBit says: If you want to deserve love, do something. “Something” means become more and more fit…
By turning every time and place into an opportunity to work out, the FitBit teaches that it would take real slothfulness ever to do otherwise. It shows us that sex and even sleep can be forms of productivity if they are only tracked properly. And so, just as a currency trader must always keep his mind’s eye on the market, which is always open somewhere, our bodies must learn to remain active 24/7.
The vision is total. For the dedicated user, to leave the house without putting on her FitBit is to feel as if the day never happened. When I mislaid mine, I was inconsolable until a friend, another addict, pointed out that, without even meaning to, we had basically memorized how many steps it took to get to and from most of the places we regularly went. Later I found it in the pocket of a bathrobe.
Image: The Laughing Woman, 1969