Ancient self-observation aimed at ethical truth while data self-tracking only monitors.

Evidence

In antiquity, the care of the self was also tied to practices of self-observation. Publicatio sui (Tertullian) represented a significant component of paying due attention in this manner: Writing was also important in the culture of taking care of oneself. One of the main features of taking care involved taking notes on oneself to be reread, writing treatises and letters to friends to help them, and keeping notebooks in order to reactivate for oneself the truths one needed. Publicatio sui meant committing to the search for truth. Records of one’s life served an ethics of the self. In contrast, dataism’s self-tracking is devoid of all ethics and truth; it amounts simply to a technology for self-monitoring. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 139

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the care-of-the-self ethics in Foucault’s Hermeneutics of the Subject; contrast with the Quantified Self instrumentalism.
• SHARE: The Tertullian publicatio sui concept — self-writing as ethical practice — is niche enough for a Foucauldian friend.