scholarly journals Move, eat, sleep, repeat: Living by rhythm with proactive self-tracking technologies

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (s4) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Minna Vigren ◽  
Harley Bergroth
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Healthcare Setting ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Tracking Devices ◽  
Gathering Data

Abstract Proactive self-tracking is a proliferating digital media practice that involves gathering data about the body and the self outside a clinical healthcare setting. Various studies have noted that self-tracking technologies affect people's everyday modes of thought and action and stick to their lifeworlds because these technologies seek to promote “improved” modes of behaviour. We investigate how the specific devices and interfaces involved in self-tracking attract and prescribe rhythmicity into everyday lives and elaborate on how human bodies and technical systems of self-tracking interact rhythmically. We draw from new materialist ontology, combining it with Henri Lefebvre's method of rhythmanalysis and his notion of dressage. We employ a collaborative autoethnographical approach and engage with both of our personal fieldwork experiences in living with self-tracking devices. We argue that rhythmicity and dressage are fruitful analytical tools to use in understanding human–technology attachments as well as a variety of everyday struggles inherent in self-tracking practices.

scholarly journals MOVE, EAT, SLEEP, REPEAT: RHYTHMIC STRUGGLES IN PROACTIVE SELF-TRACKING PRACTICES

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harley Bergroth ◽  
Minna Saariketo
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Activity Tracking ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
Tracking Devices

In this paper, we trace the rhythmicities of activity tracking by applying the method of technograhical collaborative autoethnography (cf. Bucher, 2012; Chang, Hernandez & Ngunjiri, 2012). The focus is on on proactive self-tracking that has become a proliferating digital media practice involving the gathering of data about the body and one’s everyday patterns of being outside the context of clinical health care. In the paper, we address the gap that still exists in research of exploring the mechanisms by and through which the human-technology attachments operate in practice. Drawing from a new materialist understanding of media technologies combined with Lefebvrian rhytmanalysis, we focus on the rhythmic aspects of self-tracking by asking how specific self-tracking devices and interfaces attract and prescribe repetition, rhythms, beats, pulses, and cycles into everyday lives. In so doing, we elaborate how human bodies and technical systems of self-tracking interact rhythmically. The analysis sheds light on the rhythms and beats that we interpret as illustrations of the ’technological unconscious’ (Thrift & French, 2002). We bring our observations in dialogue with the contemporary critical arguments pointing to the design of products that are made as addictive as possible in the race for ‘hijacking minds’ and capturing attention. Our research contributes empirically to the lack of research that has systematically examined these seductive and yet controlling properties of software, and complements the theory of rhythmanalysis with theorization on the hierarchical organisation of rhythms and related power dynamics in the digital context.

Digital and Technical Developments in the Amblyopia Therapy

2020 ◽  
Vol 237 (10) ◽  
pp. 1172-1176
Author(s):  
Charlotte Schramm ◽  
Yaroslava Wenner
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Technical Progress ◽  
Therapy Monitoring ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
The Future

AbstractThe digital media becomes more and more common in our everyday lives. So it is not surprising that technical progress is also leaving its mark on amblyopia therapy. New media and technologies can be used both in the actual amblyopia therapy or therapy monitoring. In particular in this review shutter glasses, therapy monitoring and analysis using microsensors and newer video programs for amblyopia therapy are presented and critically discussed. Currently, these cannot yet replace classic amblyopia therapy. They represent interesting options that will occupy us even more in the future.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.

Operational analysis: A method for observing and analyzing digital media operations

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482199864
Author(s):  
Kathrin Friedrich ◽  
A S Aurora Hoel
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Task Orientation ◽  
Operational Analysis ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Robotic Radiosurgery ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
Operational Models ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
Tracking Devices

Interventional digital media applications such as robotic surgery, remote-controlled vehicles or wearable tracking devices pose a challenge to media research methodologically as well as conceptually. How do we go about analyzing operational media, where human and non-human agencies intertwine in seemingly inscrutable ways? This article introduces the method of o perational analysis to systematically observe and critically analyze such situated, interventional and multilayered entanglements. Against the background of ongoing efforts to develop operational models for understanding digital media, the method of operational analysis conceptually ascribes to media technologies a real efficacy by approaching them as adaptive mediators. As an operational middle-range approach, it allows to integrate theoretical discussions with considerations of the situatedness, directedness, and task-orientation of operational media. The article presents an analytical toolbox for observing and analyzing digital media operations while simultaneously testing it on a particular application in robotic radiosurgery.

Effect of Exposure to Photographs of Thin Models on Self-Consciousness in Female College Students

2000 ◽  
Vol 86 (3_part_2) ◽  
pp. 1149-1154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandy S. Wegner ◽  
Anita M. Hartmann ◽  
C. R. Geist
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
College Women ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Female College Students ◽  
Female College ◽  
Body Self

The purpose of this study was to assess the immediate influence of brief exposure to images taken from print media on the general self-consciousness and body self-consciousness of 67 college women. After viewing photographs of either thin female models or control photographs, the women completed the Self-consciousness Scale and the Body Self-consciousness Questionnaire. Although a was .45, the college women who looked at images of thin female models gave immediate ratings significantly ( p < .001) higher on both general Self-consciousness and Body Self-consciousness than those who looked at control images.

The use of chatbots as supportive agents for people seeking help for drug and alcohol addiction: A systematic review. (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Ogilvie ◽  
Jerome Carson ◽  
Julie Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Healthcare Setting ◽  
The Body ◽  
Alcohol Addiction ◽  
Bibliographic Databases ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Qualitative Work ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Drug And Alcohol

BACKGROUND The use of chatbots in healthcare is an area of study receiving increased academic interest. As the knowledge base grows, the granularity in the level of research is being refined, seeing more targeted work in specific areas of healthcare, for example, chatbots for anxiety and depression, cancer care, and pregnancy support. This paper focuses on the targeted application of chatbots in drug and alcohol addiction. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to systematically review and summarise the research conducted on the use of chatbots in the field of addiction, specifically the use of chatbots as supportive agents for those who suffer from drug and alcohol addiction. METHODS A systematic search of bibliographic databases using the broad search criteria of “chatbot and addiction,” identified papers for screening. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool were used, which resulted in the quality assessment and review of 5 papers. RESULTS Although the body of research in this field is limited, what has been published shows promising results. A combination of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies were reviewed, among which statistically significant findings were reported on the efficacy of chatbots targeted at drug and alcohol addiction. These findings were also substantiated in the qualitative work reviewed. A strong message of caution was conveyed however on the ethical implications of using chatbots to afford support to addicted individuals. CONCLUSIONS The literature reviewed shows that more work is needed to appreciate solutions that leverage existing data, such as big data available from social media, or that which is accessed by prevalent market leading chatbots. It also highlighted ethical concerns over the use of a non-human agent to afford support to those with drug and alcohol addiction. It was reported however, that statistically significant results were returned for ‘bespoke’ chatbots in this area of healthcare, setting a promising foundation for future work.

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