The Rise of Personal Informatics

I was just reading an interesting article at The Pop!Tech Blog: The Rise of Personal Informatics.

According to the author, personal informatics “is the monitoring and display of information about our personal lives, those activities we participate in daily or routinely.” He adds:

“A primary premise behind personal informatics is that people will change their behavior for the better if given accurate information about the state of things. This is a powerful idea, and rests on the assumption that people will do good if given the chance. Time will tell if knowing more about ourselves will set us on a path to righteousness, or whether it will simply add to the information overload we already have.”

He lists several examples and highlights Google Power Meter.