Sometime in the not too distant future we will have the technological means to monitor our mood throughout the day. And once that happens, people will start correlating, using the same sorts of analytics currently used by major internet search engines.
And surprises will emerge. These surprises may include the mood changing effects of encountering certain people in the course of the day, eating certain foods, getting particular kinds of exercise, walking through rooms with blue colored walls, or just slipping on a fresh pair of socks.
We’ll all be able to summon up the “Google map” of our own psychic make-up, charting the influences upon that psyche. People will start to be able to fine-tune their day, to soothe their neuroses and optimize their moment by moment personal experience of life.
Which may not necessarily be all to the good. Without those ragged edges, those rude surprises, all the odd little threads of psychic distress that dangle off the buttonholes of our existence, we might find ourselves just a little less creative, a bit less prepared for the unexpected.
Of course, my opinion on this might change later today.
Depending on my mood. 🙂
I’ll bet there’s an app for that :). I know some people who do this sort of thing. http://www.google.com/search?q=personal+analytics.
Okay, weird coincidence, I just went from reading your blog post to checking my Twitter stream and one of my Google colleagues tweeted that he is at the Quantified Self conference this weekend: http://www.quantifiedself.com/conference/. One of the breakout sessions is on mood tracking. The future is today, apparently.
Ah, what an interesting coincidence! I like that phrase “quantified self”, although somehow it makes me a bit nervous.
Perhaps all of our respective thinking about mood tracking has somehow synchronized, through some sort of collective unconscious.
Or maybe we are all just Jung at heart. 🙂
🙂
The funny thing about coincidences is that you tend to find what you are looking for. If I hadn’t read and responded to your blog post, Matt’s tweet would have been just one more peep in the cacophony that is Twitter.
If you want to get really nervous, read Tim Ferris’s “The Four Hour Body” . I had read a bit of it a while ago and was reminded of it by this discussion. The guy is somewhat of a madman in the “quantitied self” arena, but an entertaining one.
Minor correction to the book reference above. The title is spelled “The 4-Hour Body” and the author’s last name is spelled Ferriss. Here’s an apropos quote that he attributes to William Gibson:
“The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.”