Apps now colonize even trivial bodily functions like thirst into trackable social data

Evidence

Following a series of fainting spells, doctors advised her to increase her hydration because, like many busy people, she sometimes forgets to take a water break. Fortunately, as the cliché goes, there’s an app for that. The makers of Water Minder offer a program to bypass the part of the brain that regulates thirst, reminding you to drink regularly to meet predefined quotas while tracking your progress. Like many apps, the program claims to turn what would otherwise be an insignificant private act into a social celebration, allowing you to earn achievements that you can share with your friends. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 23

Categorization

• SHARE: The Water Minder example — an app that ‘bypasses the part of the brain that regulates thirst’ — is a perfect small absurdity to send to someone interested in the quantified-self trend.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does ‘bypassing thirst regulation’ have genuine physiological effects, or is it marketing rhetoric? The claim is doing heavy lifting for the extended-colonization thesis.
• XREF: connects to: Apps collect data beyond user control while framing collection as enhanced experience — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 517; Normal human activities that feel unproductive become exploited as data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 675; Platforms extract behavioral surplus from human activity to predict and modify it. — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 809 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Normal human activities that feel unproductive become exploited as data #expands (0.92) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 675
• Datafied systems may replace bodily self-knowledge with calibrated external monitoring. #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 467
• Platforms extract behavioral surplus from human activity to predict and modify it. #expands (0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 809
• Apps collect data beyond user control while framing collection as enhanced experience #contradicts (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 517
• Everyday consumer objects are being redesigned as behavioral data sources #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 748
• “Smart” objects are euphemisms for the extraction of behavioral data. #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 747