
Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics - tarunmitra
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514356/stephen-wolfram-on-personal-analytics/
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josephagoss
I'm not sure if this is a good idea for everyone. I think Steve gets a little
lost in his world and think that what works for him will work for everyone.

A lot of people will find this type of technology a solution in search of a
problem. This type of analysis may even distract from peoples lives.

Would the knowing that you do a certain thing a certain percent of the time
almost become self fulfilling?

This is the type of technology that can make you into a productive cold robot,
the thing is many people are not interested in becoming like this.

Maybe I'm wrong and we all now need personal analysis to squeeze the most out
of life.

~~~
hispanic
Wow. Doesn't seem to be big into serendipity, does he?

In general, I don't see the point of doing all that analysis. Or, at least he
doesn't provide many good reasons (in my opinion) for doing it. This is the
only one I could see:

> Very early on, back in the 1990s, when I first analyzed my e-mail archive, I
> learned that a lot of e-mail threads at my company would, by a certain time
> of day, just resolve themselves. That was a useful thing to know, because if
> I jumped in too early I was just wasting my time.

Now, this seems like a genuinely useful insight. But, in my mind, this isn't
personal analytics. This is email analytics. See mailstrom -
<http://mailstrom.co/>

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josephagoss
I agree, finding useful things is good, I missed that one about the time of
day.

It comes down to time invested in analyzing and useful data out.

I'm on the fence about it. If truly useful information can be obtained without
having to set up anything then that's a good thing. However a lot of personal
analysis would happen away from the computer too. How to record real life away
from PC data?

Maybe Google glass could automatically detect what your eating?

Its all about time. Do you want to spend x amount of time time
analyzing/setting up instruments/inputting real life data into a
computer/iPhone, to potentially save y time? and risk saving no y time and
losing x time?

I think some more people doing this and showing a clear positiveness would be
a good thing.

Also another aspect is some people will enjoy collecting data and others
won't. Some people take a thousand photos on holiday, others 10. I think this
type of personal data aggregation will appeal to some and just seem daft to
others. Which is the beauty of humanity I guess.

~~~
hispanic
> However a lot of personal analysis would happen away from the computer too.
> How to record real life away from PC data?

Good (and thought-provoking) point. This approach implicitly encourages a
tech/gadget-heavy focus in one's life - which makes me queasy. And what would
be the end-result of this analysis? More-efficient, but deeper-ingrained use
of technology? If the result of the analysis were people putting down their
smartphones and, instead, have face-to-face conversations with other people -
or people no longer playing Candy Crush Saga and, instead, putting that time
toward a cause that improves the world, I'd be all for it. But, I don't see
that happening.

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PavlovsCat
_"Don’t collect data. If you know everything about yourself, you know
everything. There is no use burdening yourself with a lot of data. Once you
understand yourself, you understand human nature and then the rest follows."_
\--- Kurt Gödel

I have no need for the the notion that my act of living constitutes an object
("my life")... that would be burning down the village in order to "improve"
it.

~~~
pavlov
Couldn't agree more. (I am satisfied with your training, Cat.)

~~~
PavlovsCat
Likewise! :P

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ohwp
Read the article and I'm still not sure why I should measure and analyze my
life. How will it improve my life?

I just try to enjoy life. So I don't feel the need to worry about data or
memories.

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pushkargaikwad
Being a data nerd, I can see where Stephen is coming from but I don't think we
need a software or dashboard to analyze our personal life, the last thing we
want is a society which is obsessed with "why I did that and what it could had
been" kind of questions.

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ramykhuffash
"Augmented memory is going to be very important." I don't work for them or
even use the product anymore, but CloudMagic (<https://cloudmagic.com>) came
to mind when I red this.

It goes some way to augment memory and is fast & easy to use.

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rodh257
I use Fitocracy to track my fitness, MyFitnessPal to log every bit of food I
eat and <http://askmeevery.com/> to email me once a day reminding me to rate
things between 1 and 10, like health, happiness, productivity. These all don't
take much effort really, and they give me some interesting history. I'm hoping
to do things like correlate what I eat with how well my workouts go, or how
healthy I feel in the future.

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rthomas6
This reminds me of Quantified Self. <http://quantifiedself.com/>

~~~
gwern
Yes, but I think it's at best a partial QS, almost a degenerate parody of QS;
I've argued ( <http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#what-qs-is-not-just-data-gathering> )
that Wolfram here is exemplifying for us how _not_ to do QS - he is gathering
an enormous amount of data, but failing to _do_ anything with it besides
visualization.

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jweir
When the Singularity comes we will get our analytics and instructions for
free.

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uhmmwhat
Wolfram stopped being relevant years ago.

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drorweiss
Dude... let go :)

