Self-tracking autonomy comes at the cost of permanent submission to external data systems

Evidence

“Know thyself” is one of the oldest ethical maxims, but it has been used to market self-tracking devices ever since the days of the humble bathroom scale. As life becomes capitalized, “know thyself” morphs from philosophical principle to profit center. No doubt specific knowledge can be gained from some forms of self-tracking, and there is much to be gained sociologically in better understanding how individuals use such technologies. But what in the long run constitutes valuable self-knowledge here—valuable for whom? The goods generated by capitalist data relations are profoundly ambiguous. They offer us, apparently, the chance to be more autonomous—in the sense of regulating ourselves more intensely—but at the cost of submitting to an external data system whose functioning requires the integration of its devices permanently into the space where, until now, we imagined we were truly, and only, ourselves. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 516

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘autonomy-as-intensified-self-regulation’ analysis maps onto the attention/surveillance school’s argument about self-disciplinary subjects; also connects to Zamyatin’s We where the self’s quantified regulation is totalitarian rather than liberating. — connects to: Voluntariness of self-tracking does not blunt its extractive function — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 512; Self-tracking practices reproduce data capitalism rather than resist it — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 1138; Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 148 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether data-colonies’ framing of ‘self-knowledge’ actually delivers any epistemically reliable self-knowledge, or only reflexively useful data.

Broader Connections

• Self-tracking practices reproduce data capitalism rather than resist it #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 1138
• Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148
• Extraction imperative forces relentless automated tracking and framing experience as free raw material #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1067
• Datafication may disrupt autonomy at the level of self-boundedness itself #qualifies (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 500
• Willing personal tracking normalizes tracking as infrastructure in less voluntary domains #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 415
• Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood #complicates (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 489