Nicholas Felton has tracked almost every aspect of his life, from the miles he’s walked to the average length of his personal conversations.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and note down what Nicholas says about the following:
OCD
Profession and previous job
Taking notes
Custom maps
Fitbit
Nike fuel band
a Basics watch
Automatic cell phone
Rescuetime app
grocery store
eMobo phone company
The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.
The further you look, the more things can be quantified or already been quantified. I counted all the places that I’ve been, all the people I’ve been with, the restaurants and bars visited, how many miles I’ve walked, all the beverages I’ve consumed, books I’ve read, music I’ve listened to.
Are you obsessive compulsive?
I think there’s a difference between being obsessive compulsive and having obsessive compulsive disorder so, I… certainly I don’t have OCD.
I’m an information designer who uses data to communicate and tell stories. I previously worked in Facebook, and for nearly the last decade I’ve been producing annual reports that allow me to play with data visualization summarizing a year of my life. For example, I’ve rendered an average day in a graph that shows my activities hour by hour.
For the most part, collecting all these data means taking notes as events happen and putting them into a calendar. My process has evolved to include custom maps that allow me to manually record what I’m doing over time. I started wearing a Fitbit that counts how many steps I take. Nowadays I also wear a Nike fuel band and the Basis watch that keep track of not only physical activity but my heart rate and sleep time. In my car I use a cell phone called Automatic that gives me feedback on just mileage and where I go. On my computer I’m currently using an app called Rescuetime and this will track the apps that I use and the websites that I visit and actually gives me a productivity score at the end of each day. I’ve also been playing with a breathalyser.
This year and last year have been very fraught for people who work with data and my fear is that people will go into a state of ignorance about all the data that’s been generated.
When we shop at the grocery store, they have access to our entire history of purchases and could know plenty about what we’re most likely to buy and the nutritional value of all this food. The eMobo phone company has a means of delivering calls to you, knows pretty accurately where you and your phone are at all times. All these data represent a piece of our identity that is being either traded or manipulated or, you know, in some cases used against you, and so knowing who has access to these data and what’s being done with it is really important.
