My Data, My Self: A Century of Self-Tracking Health Technologies

Today’s digital health-tracking devices help us measure, monitor, and quantify our bodies, from our heart rates to our insulin levels, from the number of steps we take to the number of hours we sleep. 

 

The data they give us may feel empowering. But these readouts can also prompt new questions and new responsibilities, and change our understanding of what counts as healthy and what counts as sick.

 

Taking participants through a century of self-tracking—from women using body temperature to track their fertility, to the devices used to monitor diabetes, to recent debates about genetic tests for disease risk—this panel will explore the technologies we use to ask and answer questions about our health and what we do (and don’t) come to know about ourselves in the process.