This week’s reading:

The Personal Analytics of My Life – Stephen Wolfram, Stephen Wolfram Blog, March 2012

My reaction:

This was an incredible story. I think the thing that stuck out for me for was having the personal anecdotes to accompany the data. There is a lot that we can infer from the data itself, especially if we include referential data (like the history of his projects and how they correlate to his work habits). But towards the end, he answered something really important that other readers had asked him: “With everything you have going on, do you find time for your family?” If we only looked at the data provided, it would seem that he was pretty consistent with spending a couple hours each day not doing anything work related during dinner time, but was probably unavailable any other time. His direct comment to the question fills in parts of the story that are not in the data.

This made me wonder if we can quantify all personal data. My gut tells me no, that things like happiness, comfort, pain, joy, strength in relationships, etc. can’t be measured or quantified. But maybe I’m wrong. He had systems in place for him to collect quantifiable data about himself over time. I wonder what systems we can use to store and share none quantifiable data about ourselves.