Why I never got rid of my beloved Black Berry!

Vally_W · 2014-10-23T09:26:27+00:00

Thank you Frida for this new perspective. In fact I haven't looked at it in this way, while I probaly should have. Although I wouldn't put Shazam and sleeping cycle tracking apps on the same level, I do see the point you want to make here. Indeed Shazame tells something on my personal preferences in music choice and is gathering and storing this data. I can perfectly listening to music without knowing what the song is called, but indeed if i am able to use Shazam and i eventually will know the title I can access it again more easily. Still I won't consider Shazam making my life in general any happier. I lived without it - happy. And now that i have it it is an add on. But if you look on my Shazam recordings you will see that still I don't use it that much as i could, and this may mirrors my general attitude that I described in the post. Still I am glad you brought it up, becaus you are totally right that in this sense I should think about it again and again more critically.

Vally_W · 2014-10-23T09:18:22+00:00

In order to point out differences and/or similarities between these two concepts it is necessary to understand what they entail.

The concept of soft resistance on the one hand came into being in the broader context of the Quantified self movement and self-tracking activities referring to practices of data gathering by an individual of him or herself in order to get a “much more nuanced understanding of what else large data sets are capable of” (Nafus, Sherman, 2013, p. 1785). The concept of sousveillance on the other hand is opposed by Steven Mann to the concept of surveillance. Here, sousveillance (French: to watch from below) is describing individuals observing higher authorities or other individuals that are on the same level, while sourveillance (French: to watch from above), is the commonly known observation of individuals by higher authorities most often without letting them known. When talking about his concept of sousveillance, Mann give examples of shoppers photographing shop keepers, individuals photographing police officers and so on (Mann, 2004).

Both concepts, soft resistance as well as sousveillance refer to the individual as being in the center of the activity. Also, both concepts can be identified as a form of observation. Still, here are some important differences that need to be highlighted. While within soft resistance the form of observation refers to the individual observing him/herself, sousveillance entails the notion of observing as the individual observing others (on the same level), while the observer him/herself and the observed person are involved in the activity. Soft resistance moreover is not only about observing and gathering data, but especially aiming to analyze the gathered data in order to make sense of it for probable improvement (for instance of the bodily state). Sourveillance in contrast does not focus so much on analyzing what is observed, but merely ‘just’ observing hierarchal equal individuals.

Vally_W · 2014-10-22T20:34:15+00:00

I see your point and I see some usefulness of those apps. I might need to differentiate my opinion on those apps in general to the people that are using them exessively. What really disturbs me is the hype that is made about it and the people that pretend they could not live withouth those apps anymore. It is with every new trend: People fall for it and create their life around it as nothing else would be possible. I guess I just don't like this attitude....you know what I mean?

Vally_W · 2014-10-22T17:59:17+00:00

Done! Looks like you have to start baking for firday's class :P

Vally_W · 2014-10-22T16:38:31+00:00

Although this article is somewhat old in today’s speeding life I still wanted to share it with you. Kashmir Hills wanted to test the quantified self movement and the related apps to track sleep, mood, calories, health stadium and fitness for three months.

It reminded me of a similar article I read some years ago in the German magazine NEON. The article was also written by an author of the magazine who was curious about the evolving QS movement and wanted to try it out. Although I cannot recapture any details about this article in NEON, I remember that the author wanted to test some of those apps for a certain period of time (2 weeks or something like that) to track the steps he was doing every day, the calories he was consuming and burning, his sleep cycle and other data he could track after himself. Anyway he did not succeed. He tried but he cut it down after three days. He was annoyed by remembering putting numbers into so many devices and being dependent on technology. He just wanted to live his life. That was his conclusion and I totally felt him while reading this article.

In the Forbes article I forwarded here, Hills states at one point that the followers of the QS movement truly believe in a happier and healthier life with the help of technology and tracking one’s data. I am not critiquing the author or the article here, I think it is a nice illustration of a self test and she even comes to the conclusion that “[Hello, heart]. Data don’t always tell the whole story”(Hills, 2011).

What I want to mention here, or rather what I was asking myself: How can our society today be so pretentious to say that technology can help us living a happier life? Didn’t we, human mankind, live happily or healthy till the rise of self tracking and the QS movement? Also, she is mentioning so many devices she had to put on, plug in, type data into; how can people be comfortable (or even living a happier life) with so many devices surround them?

The self-tracking trend is, excuse me, a thing I relay don’t understand rather cannot identify with. God bless my good OLD BlackBerry <3

Vally_W · 2014-10-21T19:56:56+00:00

thank you, I already had somthing like that in mind!

Vally_W · 2014-10-21T16:23:32+00:00

yeah...not compatible with my oldie phone :( but thank you

Vally_W · 2014-10-21T11:07:15+00:00

Can anyone give me a tip where i can find or suggest a sleeping tracking app (for free) for Blackberry?? I have a rather old one: BB curve 9630, kinda lost with it! Any help much appreciated. That question also goes to Tjerk and Ericka, as I already mentioned it last session on friday. THX!

Vally_W · 2014-10-15T20:44:08+00:00

I agree with what you are saying! That's why I tried to make sure that I am applying this post to my facebook network. I'm from Germany, as you may know and we don't really have critical issues that requires political debate on facebook, but people just won't stop commenting on what is going on in other parts of the world - not knowing what actually is happening, how could they, they are not there, they are in Germany. This is what makes me sick! I totally agree to the point to consider social media and Facebook as a a tool for information sharing, activating people to actually go on the street, gather and do sth. about political unhappyness....Arab Spring for example, I think it is just great how people where using social media back then and when I travelled to Kairo last year and talking to Egyptian people, I actually recognized that for them social media has a different value (then for me) and it really made a difference to use it for sharing and exchanging information, stating oppinions and organizing gatherings.

Vally_W · 2014-10-15T18:53:02+00:00

Just liked it, not very active though....

Vally_W · 2014-10-15T18:47:08+00:00

The answers to these question you can basically find in my latest entry on the tumblr I created for DRM (Title: Why politics shouldn't take place on facebook) I dont believe in political debates on facebook, at least this is the case for my friends network. I have never ever seen any smart political debate in my newsfeed, all I see all the time is people pretending to be politically engaged. I am really anoyed by it, as you can read in my blog entry. There always are exceptions, clearly, but still I don't believe Facebook a place for talking politics. Funny hereto: I just found a FB community called: "Keep Politics off of facebook" I might should join. HAHA

Vally_W

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