Fitter, happier, more productive… (about self-quantification)

Fitter, happier, more productive
Comfortable, not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym 3 days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease, eating well
Sleeping well, no bad dreams, no paranoia
Keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then
At a better pace, slower and more calculated
Less chance of illness
A good memory
Still cries at a good film
Still kisses with saliva
No longer empty and frantic
The ability to laugh at weakness
Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig
in a cage
on antibiotics

lyrics from the radiohead song: Fitter Happier (OK Computer – 1997)

The lyrics of Fitter Happier – some of which we reproduce – are a list of 90’s slogans representing the social values of yuppie culture and corporate lifestyle.

A group of people, perhaps unable to grasp the irony of the lyrics, could make this song their anthem. We are referring to the supporters of the idea of the “Quantified Self” (Quantified Shelf or simply QS), who indeed claim to be members of a global movement (the Quantified Self movement). The idea of the “quantified self” emerged in 2007 and aims to fulfill the values of personal effectiveness, productivity, healthy living, and high performance through the integration of necessary machines and applications into aspiring quantified bodies.
The term “quantified self” was first introduced in 2007 by two technology writers from the magazine Wired, based in San Francisco, Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly.

They created the blog “Quantified Self”, where they began to write articles advocating quantification. In one of the blog’s early texts, titled “What is Quantified Self”, as a founding declaration, Kevin Kelly blends some very old metaphysical questions with his email inbox, presenting them as the essence of the modern era:

The central question of the coming century is “Who are we? What is a human being? What does it mean to be a person? Is human nature fixed? Sacred? Infinitely expandable? And in the meantime, how will I read all my emails? Or will I live to become 100.”

Very thought-provoking questions… Kelly then provides his own solution, so that humanity can answer them:

We believe that the answer to these worldly questions will be founded on a personal dimension. Real change will happen to individuals as they seek self-knowledge. Self-knowledge of the body, mind, and spirit. Many are searching for this self-knowledge, and we embrace all paths toward it. Nevertheless, the specific, straightforward path we have chosen to explore here is rational: If something cannot be measured, it cannot be improved. Therefore, we are on a campaign to gather as many personal tools as possible that will help us achieve a quantifiable measurement of ourselves. We welcome tools that help us see and understand our bodies and minds, so that we can comprehend why people are here. Suggested categories include:

Measuring the body’s chemical loads, Personal genome sequencing, lifelogging1, Self-experimentation, Risk/Legal rights/Duties, behavior tracking, location logging, non-invasive sensors, digitization of bodily information, sharing of health records, psychological self-assessments, self-medical diagnosis.

Your guides on this initial journey are Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf. Write to us with your suggestions, tips and observations.

Before you rush to consider Kevin Kelly as the son of God of a new-age techno-religion, let us explain that, as we read at some point on the blog, “Quantified Self” is an international collaboration of users and manufacturers of self-monitoring tools. In fact, Quantified Self Labs is a California-based company founded by Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf to provide services to the global QS user community through the organization of international meetings, conferences and exhibitions, forums, online content and a guide for using self-monitoring tools, with the goal of helping people extract useful meaning from the data they themselves produce. The blog is sponsored and collaborates with major technology and software companies, such as Intel.

The “Quantified Self movement” evangelizes the pursuit of self-actualization mainly through the use of wearable machines that employ sensors, big data, applications and cloud platforms in order to monitor and improve bodily functions with the ultimate goal of achieving the perfect self. “Instead of seeking their inner worlds through spoken or written language”, self-trackers, as Wolf explains, seek “self-knowledge through numbers. Behind the enthusiasm for the quantified self lies the assumption that many of our problems stem from a lack of appropriate equipment to understand who we are.”

We do not know for sure whether a church of the quantified self-god will be created, but what is certain is that followers of “self-quantification,” “self-monitoring,” or “body hacking” periodically gather in 128 cities, so far, in 40 countries around the world, where local enthusiasts and evangelists of quantification organize conferences under the logo of the Quantified Self blog. In Athens, the corresponding meeting is organized at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos.” The invitation is extended on the occasion of the European project USEFIL, coordinated by “Demokritos.” The purpose is to disseminate techniques and tools for monitoring sleep, exercise, mood, and enhancing social activities. The invitation, as stated on the meeting’s website, is addressed to users, designers or inventors of technology, entrepreneurs, journalists, scientists, health professionals, or simply those driven by curiosity.

Beads and mirrors…

To give you an idea of the sheer number of Gadgets and wearable devices of all kinds already in circulation, we will take an “advertising break” to give you a snapshot, not from far away, by copying excerpts from two enthusiastic articles from the newspaper Kathimerini. The first was published in February 2014 and is titled “Watching Ourselves”:

An approach that resonates with consumers: according to an Ericsson survey in 40 countries, 59% of users want, for example, a device that records how much they walk. Therefore, the Swedish company predicts that the “quantified self” will constitute one of the most important technological trends in 2014. The first such devices, fitness trackers, are already available on the market, measuring various biological parameters—among others, the calories someone has burned and, from their movements during the night, the quality of their sleep. From manufacturers like Nike, their market reaches $300 million today. A figure that is expected to multiply this year, as similar models will be released by several more, and more well-known, companies.
Thus, at the CES technology exhibition in Las Vegas, new products in this category were presented by [a series of companies]… these gadgets resemble “smart” wristbands, with some even featuring screens to also transmit notifications and messages from the user’s mobile phone to their wrist. …the SmartBand – a device which, in addition to being a fitness tracker, also records social activities, …a device specifically for monitoring heart rate, …a biometric bracelet …a “smart” bracelet, …which will record sun exposure.
For those, however, who want more detailed information about whether they are resting well, Sleep Number offers the X12, a bed with sensors that monitor sleep quality, breathing, and pulse. Although the X12 will also relieve those who sleep with someone who snores, as it will raise the head to stop the snoring, it will cost $8,000. In contrast, the Withings Aura is priced at $300, with a sensor placed under the pillow.
Benefit from the “quantification” logic will also come to oral hygiene, according to the company Kolibree, which developed the first “connected” electric toothbrush. The toothbrush transmits data to the mobile phone regarding the frequency and duration of brushing. Additionally, those who purchase the “smart” fork HAPIfork will see on their mobile phone whether they are eating slowly enough to feel full with a small amount of food, as well as their meal history. The HAPIfork recently began sales in the US for $100, and it also vibrates when the user eats too quickly.

Excerpt from an article in Kathimerini, by journalist K. Deligianni, 18.01.2015 titled “A doctor hidden… in our clothes”:

Although T-shirts or socks with… intelligence have been around for about a decade, few products are currently available on the market. However, by 2015, “smart” clothing will make their presence felt much more clearly. …the Canadian OMSignal launched a short-sleeve and a long-sleeve T-shirt that measure heart rate and breathing rhythm. Priced at $199, the T-shirts transmit data to a detachable device under the armpit, which in turn wirelessly sends it to the user’s smartphone. [..]
For example, Heapsylon wants its socks in the future to “detect” when the wearer is about to lose balance. It is also experimenting with “smart” pajamas … On its part, the British SmartLife envisions clothing that will “detect” flu symptoms in zero time, so that one can take timely action. For this reason, the sensors in such clothing will be able to detect minor changes in temperature, sweating, and the frequency of coughing, which will be continuously monitored by an algorithm.

Similar functionality can be achieved by technologies integrated on the skin, such as electronics made from flexible and elastic materials, or small or larger implants.
In 2012, journalist Emily Waltz published an article in the IEEE Spectrum technology magazine titled “How I Quantified Myself”. For two months, she tested wearable devices and sensors that allowed her to describe herself through numbers and diagrams, something like this:

Daily: Sleep: 6 hours, 35 minutes. Energy expenditure per day: 2306 kilocal. Calories consumed per day: 2269. Moderate activity per day: 2 hours, 38 minutes. Intense activity per week: 56 minutes. Blood pressure: 102/64. Heart rate: 66 beats per minute. Weight: 55 kilograms. Body mass index: 18.5

The applications that are developed are also numerous and are essentially used to collect data from wearable devices and sensors and ultimately visualize them. Twitter users, for example, post on their account images that show the trace of their movement in a city for a certain period of time. These images are received by using motion mapping applications, feeding them with data collected via GPS of their smartphone or some wearable device, as they move around the city.

Some software tools are used for direct data input. Some, for example, send you a message to your mobile or send you an email and ask you if you ate an egg today, if you feel like it or if you are feeling nervous and other such things… and for your own good you must answer honestly. Later you can see all this in tables and diagrams.
There are also applications that create a social network based on some measurement. One such is MyFitnessPal, which has 40 million users participating in a social network around the number of calories they consume.

All of the above could certainly be described as a heap of technological garbage from capitalism for hypochondriac techno-geeks who are looking for ways to socialize through the calories they burn or seek “civilized” technical means of self-punishment and reward in order to achieve self-realization. The Quantified Self groups that are created around the world could simply be characterized as groups for health freaks and gadget-addicted patients. Another perspective could be that these are psychological support groups for the smooth integration of users of technologies that record every detail of the human body into the world of relentless surveillance and analysis of every living fraction of a second. Groups within which manufacturers can see how their most enthusiastic fans are doing and keep the situation under close control: how much they have digested it and how far they can go over time. Learning to use such technologies is not simple at all, psychologically, because as you already understand, the more one uses self-recording devices, the heavier time becomes, every second is analyzed and not deleted. The history remains on hard drives, in flash memories and worse: in the cloud.

But we must also see that within this whole story, a conservative ideology is being promoted that attempts to introduce a new paradigm…

As human beings, we belong to the category of analog resources – as we would be disparagingly characterized by fans of the digital world. For them, the digital world can be visualized as a fertile valley of absolute productivity every second, while the analog world resembles a desert of inefficiency. However, this can be corrected by applying the right machines to our analog body, which will undertake the conversion.

In the world of the “Internet of Things,” every person, every living thing, and every object is a small data producer. A dot in space and time that can function, willingly or not, as an information transmitter. All this data that is produced at any given moment by the totality of networked beings and things is called big data. It is considered big because it involves an enormous volume of information generated in real time. As you might understand, all this concern and interest of technocrats in big data is not manifested as a love for the beauty of life as the infinite set of simultaneous different words that can be spoken in a city, the emotions that are expressed, the countless thoughts and relationships that are created at every moment. Nor is it something theoretical, of the type: “if all these were data, they would have an enormous volume per second.” The interest concerns the analysis of this data and, of course, the interested parties are states and companies that make great efforts to convert these potential sources of information into proper transmitters of digitized data. Data that will be formatted based on specific rules and protocols, so that they can be transferred to the appropriate central systems and undergo processing. This matter is touted as the great opportunity for companies in the information age, in order to bring about tremendous improvements in their efficiency and sales. Thus, there is no executive in the information technology sector who is not moved upon hearing the phrase “big data.”

As for the QS group of neurotic techno-hygienists, this might not concern us. We would leave them in peace to count their steps and the loukoumades they eat. (Not that our criticism would particularly bother them. It is certain that we will not disrupt their heartbeats). The intense interest, however, of another “group” in the same issue compels us to get involved. And these are none other than the bosses and their companies. This shows – not that it wasn’t already obvious – that the matter of the Quantified Self movement is merely a sympathetic showcase for promoting the interests of the bosses and the infiltration of a new surveillance paradigm for their benefit.

Before we proceed, we would like to dedicate to those who may have considered quantifying some aspect of their lives, an excerpt from a little poem written and posted on the Quantified Self blog by Alexandra Carmichael, a well-known and active self-tracker. Through this poem, the self-quantifying poet wanted to explain to the other members why she stopped self-recording:

Yes, I did it.
A gloomy Tuesday morning
After 40 measurements a day for a year and a half
Me. I stopped. To be recorded.

Why?
When I first wrote about my recording
People thought it was from narcissism
What they didn’t see
Was
The self-punishment
The fear
The hatred behind the recording
I had to stop trusting myself
To let the numbers strangle
My intuitions
My instincts

I was scared
That I didn’t have control
That I would gain a lot of weight like my genetic ancestors
I was addicted
To my smartphone apps
To get the right numbers
To beat myself
Every day
My worth was tied to the data
One kilo heavier this morning?
You’re fat.
2 grams more fat consumed?
You’re out of control.
You skipped a day of running?
You’re lazy.[..]

I will not let [self-documentation]
Be an instrument of self-torture
Never. Again.

The quantified work

Subsequently, we will refer to the plans of the employers for the implementation of technologies that bring quantification capabilities to the workplace. We describe the ways in which they intend to benefit – or are already benefiting – from the quantification of the workforce and the reasons why they consider the application of such measures important.

We translate some excerpts from an article in the IEEE technology magazine Spectrum, titled “Can technology make you happy?”, which makes a “graceful” leap at the beginning. The authors – two university psychologists from the University of California and a Hitachi collaborator – argue that since technology and the internet have driven us crazy with constant messages, the unmanageable volume of information, and the pace they have imposed on daily life, we can finally put more technology into our lives – and everywhere on our bodies – to get a grip on the situation and find our peace… With this type of justification, the article continues by supporting the introduction of quantification tools, beyond using devices in daily time, and in the workplace…

Uncontrolled email inboxes, mobile phones and laptops keeping you electronically tethered to the office, constant 30-second attention disruptions from incoming emails or mobile notifications. Does this description sound familiar? The same advances in computing and telecommunications that have brought tremendous productivity benefits have turned the working lives of those in related professions into misery. No doubt that these days many people dream of vacations while fantasizing about throwing their mobile phones into a stream on a mountainside and completely disconnecting.
But what if instead of creating stress, technology made people enjoy life more?
The construction of happiness is not as new as it sounds. Over the past decade, engineers, computer scientists, psychologists and other researchers have shown that they can do exactly that. Specifically, by monitoring and analyzing an individual’s sleep patterns, exercise and dietary habits, as well as vital statistics, they can identify problematic points in a person’s daily routine and then suggest modifications that measurably improve that person’s prospects and well-being. [..]
The same kind of technology that helps people improve their personal lives can yield positive results in the workplace: better communication, better collaboration within a team, and greater job satisfaction at all levels of an organization. [..] Sounds too good to be true? In fact, it’s absolutely possible and it’s not magic. But achieving optimal results requires the right mix of engineering and psychology.
In the early 2000s, MIT professor Alex Pentland was one of the first researchers to suggest using wearable sensors to study human well-being. [..] Pentland’s idea was to use a wearable sensor containing microphones, accelerometers and infrared transmitters, which he called a “sociometer,” to detect a person’s tone of voice as well as their movements, thereby gaining a window into the user’s experience, their social patterns, and the quality of their communication. At the time, however, the technology couldn’t be particularly helpful for this purpose. The sensors weighed about 200 grams and didn’t have sufficient storage space, processing power, or long-life battery.
Later, Pentland’s team collaborated with one of us, Kazuo Yano, and his team at Hitachi to extend the utility of such devices. Hitachi subsequently, in 2009, released them to the market under the name Business Microscope.
In its latest form, Hitachi’s Business Microscope is about the size of an ID card and weighs only 33 grams. It’s worn around the neck with a lanyard, as one would wear a name tag. Inside the casing are six infrared transceivers, an accelerometer, a flash memory chip, a microphone, a wireless transceiver, and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that allows the card to operate for up to two days at a time.
By 2012, that is, three years after the release of Hitachi’s Business Microscope, hundreds of organizations have used it, including banks, IT services companies, design firms, research centers, call centers, and hospitals, and approximately 10 terabytes of behavioral data have been collected, reaching half a million human days. Of course, understanding people’s subjective experience requires much more than simply recording how they move or whom they talk to. For this data to make sense, it needs a scientific framework of human behavior. [..]
In the workplace, one manifestation of joy is the ability to achieve a state of complete engagement and dedication in what one does, otherwise known as “flow” – a term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at Claremont Graduate University in California to describe this phenomenon. When this happens, hours pass like minutes and you forget about your external worries. [..]
In a small but interesting study, Yano, Koji Ara (on behalf of Hitachi), and psychologist Csikszentmihalyi investigated whether they could quantify when people reach this particular stage of engagement and dedication in what they’re doing. In the experiment, participants were asked to keep diaries of their feelings and corresponding activities throughout the day. Their data from the Business Microscope – specifically their movement rate as measured by the accelerometers – was compared with their diaries. [..] The key indicator of engagement turned out to be stability and consistency in movement, regardless of whether it was slow or fast. [..]
In a subsequent study, differences in participants’ daily routines were sought. We found that workers who practiced recalling positive events arrived at work with more energy (as measured by their movements) and reached peak physical activity points earlier in the day. Additionally, they spent less time interacting with colleagues. In other words, the better participants felt, the more time they devoted to their work and the less time they spent socializing, making them more active, focused, and conscientious in their duties. Certainly, a healthy organization needs a level of social interaction, but this study emphasizes the importance of balancing communication time with personal achievements. [..]
In due course, more companies will use such sensors to measure worker behavior and satisfaction, to study the effectiveness of new practices and procedures. Perhaps even to cultivate a flow. In this way, employers will be able to create environments that enhance positive engagement, dedication, and overall productivity. This would truly be a happy outcome.

What a pleasant dystopia! We can’t disagree… Alex “Sandy” Pentland himself, with his team at MIT, has been researching this field for the past 15 years, writes the following in an article in Harvard Business Review:

When we set out to document the behavior of groups that “click,” we could sense a faint buzz (like that of a beehive) within the group, even if we didn’t fully understand what the group members were talking about. […] Suspecting that [this communication] might be crucial [for effectiveness], we decided to investigate it more deeply. […] Using the data we collected, we mapped the communication behavior of a large number of people with unprecedented detail. The badges generated sociometric measurements, or in other words, measurements of how people interact, such as what tone of voice they use, whether they make eye contact, how much they gesture, how much they speak, listen, or interrupt. Even measurements related to their levels of extroversion or empathy. By comparing the data collected from all individuals in a group with the group’s performance data, we can identify the communication patterns that create successful teamwork.

It then suggests ways in which a company should use this data. The first step is to visualize the data in order to identify communication patterns. The second step recommended is the repetitive training of employees based on the feedback they will receive from their behavioral pattern data. As a final stage, efficiency optimization is applied by comparing activity and engagement data with absolute productivity metrics, such as average handling time (AHT) in a call center. Through these methods, Pentland and his colleagues argue that they can increase a company’s productivity by 25% and reduce turnover by 70%.

The Quantification and Scientific Organization of Work

The supporters of these methods for improving work productivity and ensuring greater profits have their ideological predecessors in “Scientific Management”, that is, in the Scientific Organization of Work. Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced scientific work organization in factories a little more than a century ago. By carefully observing and measuring workers’ movements as they performed their duties, Taylor advised that companies could determine the one and only best way to do a job and then impose this protocol on all workers. Through systematic data collection, industry could improve and function like a perfectly calibrated machine.

Taylor advocated that businesses should not leave workers to educate themselves on the job. But rather, in a scientific way, through the collection of data from observation, to select, train and develop each worker individually. And separately to monitor each one and provide detailed guidance so that they are productive in their own, distinct duties. Something similar appears to be what Pentland is now proposing.

From the book “The Worker and the Timepiece”, by Benjamin Coriat, we reproduce two paragraphs that refer to Taylor’s methods and remind us very much of what is now called “quantification”, showing that this stylized concept indeed, is not so new.

Measurement, assurance, control: this triple need would be expressed—and indeed, with what noise—during the great upheaval of the 1930s.[…] Taylor, Ford, and behind them the army of timekeepers and analysts—clerks of the new rationalization of capital—succeeded, therefore: by the end of the war, within the 1920s–1930s decade, a new economy regulated the mechanisms of production. Together with it, private society as a whole seemed to have been dominated by a new and strange rhythm.[..]
The stopwatch is, first and foremost, a political instrument of power over labor, because it eliminates workers’ sovereignty over methods of handling and replaces the “secrets” of the craft with a set of repeated partial movements—thus ensuring the alienation of workers’ knowledge and its appropriation by corporate management. Technology and tactics of detailed bodily control of those who work, Taylorism and the Scientific Organization of Labor, would evolve into a genuine “choreography,” a science of human movements in production, into a formal code for conducting industrial labor.

The stopwatch, however, has now become obsolete. The descendants of Taylorism therefore intend to introduce new technical means for managing work. As for work sectors that include information technology, telecommunications and networks as fixed capital, where workers seem to still have quite a large degree of control over their duties and rhythms, attempts are being made through the application of new methods, by quantifying various indicators, to transfer control of work more strictly from workers to management. Exactly as a consequence of the rules that Taylor set for work in the industries of his time. Apart from the improvements they want to bring to productivity, and since the new tools offer far more possibilities, they intend to go as far as possible. Their plans include methods to break down time into very small pieces, so that they can analyze the finest movements.

They want to accelerate management, so that the company operates like a well-calibrated machine, but also with real-time feedback, so that management can keep up with the increasingly fast pace of work being imposed on us. They also want to examine how our communication itself affects productivity, to format it into distinct patterns and rank it in terms of efficiency. They attempt to identify the causes that make us more or less productive, seeking answers even during non-working hours. In this context, studies are being published claiming specifically that a company could even intervene in the lifestyle of its workers, using quantification technology, since research suggests that this could seriously impact profits. A scientific article, for example, on the Gigaom research website states the following:

Quantified Self (QS) is formally a personal approach to recording data related to health and daily activity. Today, however, wearable technologies and QS tools are also used to improve workplace productivity. The cost of chronic diseases is high, with seven major illnesses representing a significant amount of “presenteeism”—that is, workers performing worse due to the effects of illness—and “absenteeism.”2 Depression alone is responsible for nearly one-third of the decline in productivity. One study showed that losses from reduced productivity due to chronic diseases amount to over 84 billion dollars annually.
The expansion of wearable technology, tracking-recording, social network analysis, and the data analytics sector opens new paths for addressing employee wellness, but also for understanding deeper social dynamics for any company wanting to contribute to reducing stress and improving health […] to build healthier and more productive companies. Employers find that wellness programs suffer from reduced participation and commitment from employees. Results should be evaluated and potential solutions proposed through the use of quantification apps, such as Humana Vitality, Keas, or Jiff.3

Gamification and work intensity

Amidst all this, the introduction of wearable devices that meticulously track all our activities during work hours and provide real-time feedback on their outcomes can also attempt to increase work intensity through gamified terms. There is a term for this in business management (and advertising) terminology: gamification. This concept refers to the application of video game mechanics and design techniques aimed at enhancing someone’s dedication and engagement towards achieving a goal. In the case of work, for example, when someone wears a gadget that monitors their completion of assigned tasks, the device can immediately and continuously set new targets. This way, it can subject them to faster completion rates for their individual duties. The machine does not tire, does not take breaks, and is always there, attached to the body, determining the relentless timings of the game and recording the score. If completion times are faster than set, the gadget rewards by adding extra points to the score. And better performances are always possible when one thinks in video game terms. The impacts of introducing such machines in the workplace are illustrated by the example of Tesco’s application of wearable devices for workers in its supermarkets. (More information about this can be found in details provided by a former Tesco supermarket employee to the Irish newspaper Independent in February 2013).

Two of the proclamations shared by workers with the signature “Call Center Workers” from a call center in 2011 describe the situation in the call center’s work environment, the impact of machines on work rates, and supervision through electronic indicators. We reproduce here some excerpts from the two proclamations:

…It is precisely this work that is informed: the standardized expressions, the algorithmic responses, the simultaneous monitoring of multiple windows, the practice of sociability or/and seriousness of voice and even further: the continuous clicks of mice and keystrokes, the gazes pinned on screens and the bodies nailed to chairs; the work of those of us who have grown up with video game consoles, who have “burned” in internet cafés, who have – more or less – become addicted to the bodily discipline of screens, keyboards and headphones, to the objectivity of the machine, to high scores and fast times, to automatic reactions and automatic thoughts, to algorithmic representation and binary logic…
…We have faced the ever-increasing intensification of our work. The imposition of rolling schedules, the disappearance of dead times between calls, the pressure to reduce call times, the translation of working time into machine time (4, 6 or 7 hours “Connected”, in practice, means: five minutes earlier at the entrance and five minutes later at the exit) and the use of upgraded monitoring software are nothing but continuous links in the same chain of devaluation of work…
…As for the ban on books, food, coffee and other personal items, we could only interpret it as a cold joke. After just a few weeks of work, all these did not “prevent” us from working at all, but constituted a very annoying proof for our bosses that we have the ability to do many things simultaneously with this mechanical and violent work for our minds and bodies. The image of a disciplined and uniform workspace is nothing but an ideological blackmail, the acceptance of which amputates every human expression that escapes from the mechanized/informed work for which we are paid.
The truth is that we are not paid to dance or to talk to each other. Nevertheless, it is this exchange of experiences from work that further improves the speed and quality of dealing with technical problems. But it is also what scares them the most: the conversation about the (now deeper!) level of salary and working conditions, the potential collective organization of refusals, the determination of work rhythms and times by ourselves – the collective, worker sabotage…
…That is why each one separately is called to hunt for the best times (KPIs – Key Performance Indicators) with the reward of degradation being a “bonus” or, even worse, a sad friendly pat on the back and a hidden desperate hope and effort for promotion. Even more intensification: gritting of nerves / eyes that spastically open and close / in front of screens / trembling legs / “thank you for calling us, we would be happy to serve you again” / and again from the beginning / ever faster / after a month / one less will be needed to get the job done / At the machine’s pace…
…Often, the CQ (the number of holds) rises and starts blinking, reminding that these dead times don’t exist at all; or rather, to achieve them requires more intensive work. The informatization of organization and its supervision (already informed) work, the objectivity of the luminous indication, its statistics and numbers, determines the intensification of work in such a way that the average duration of calls decreases without supervisors even needing to intervene particularly, except perhaps to remind of the existence of the luminous board. The minimization of dead times, without many holds existing, seems to be the main objective of this organization of work.
One more important measurement comes to combine with the hunt for the “low average”. These are the density diagrams of telecommunications traffic which, in combination with the “average”, dictate how many operators are needed and at what time of day, which varies at least from day to day or/and according to the month or season. How many-exactly-are-needed-and-what-time-so-that-dead-times-are-minimized translates into additional intensification of work with experimental application of overlapping and rolling schedules (which come out via software).

The quantification tools do not introduce terms that are very different from those already described here and already applied. Except, of course, for the closer relationship of devices and applications to the body under surveillance and analysis. As a continuation of what is already happening, the application of newer types of machines may mean shifting the intensity with even greater emphasis on each individual separately. Through quantification, the rules of the “game” can be imposed on each worker separately, based on their own personal data. At the same time, offering the ability to analyze many more indicators for the whole and per individual, with even greater detail.

It is also interesting to note that in one paragraph of the text, the issue of the sociality of workers outside the headset is also mentioned. This is perhaps the only aspect that is not recorded in a telephone center, since, as is well known, calls are recorded, connection and disconnection times from the system are logged, and the number of calls per day per employee and the duration of calls are among the data that are already easily measurable by computer systems. However, employers know that workers’ communication holds treasures: knowledge about how the work is done, but also risks, such as organizing their refusals, for example, supporting each other to impose their own rhythms on production. They want to know, analyze, systematize, and translate these elements into codes, as much as possible.

At the end of every boss, as mentioned in the text of the Call Center Workers, they want to see one thing and be sure of it: that everything that happens within their business is aimed solely at the work itself and improving performance in it. Anything that does not offer such benefits is a problem for everyone. As the bosses’ consultants above try to convince us, the state of absolute joy and happiness one can experience is perfect involvement and dedication to the subject of work. We know very well that it is not like that at all, not at all!

Obviously, therefore, no “better way of life” and no kind of sociality interests the company, if it is not somehow related to efficiency. Thus, although they may apply technologically improved methods in the workplace, for the rest – which is unrelated to the matter for the company – it seems that the bosses ultimately resort to the traditional methods of reprimand and prohibition.

The alienation of labor knowledge and sociality

To achieve all this, our own help and consent are also needed. As a specialist in the field of Human Resources – a “science” that also has its roots in Taylor’s theories – writes in the business magazine Forbes an article titled “Meet the Quantified Worker”:

If we all start wearing FitBits and other such devices, I’m not sure why employers wouldn’t be able to monitor the data streams coming from employees. […] Traditionally, companies used annual evaluations to gather feedback on employee engagement. This process is now becoming excessively slow, too coarse, and simply not useful enough. Companies of all sizes are beginning to move away from this process and implement real-time feedback systems.
Addressing those who work in some company, he writes the following to respond to their objections and to give a tone for how employers should frame the argument:
Where is all this going? Will your employer know so much that you’ll need to hire a lawyer and read your employment contract to decide who owns your data?
Ultimately, this is something very good. Remember that employers already have plenty of data about all of us: our work history, our salary, assessments of our performance, and when we come and leave work daily. If companies start using this information to improve the work environment, we will all see better management, better hiring, and improvement in working conditions.

All the advisors of the bosses we have met above preach yet another plundering of our labor. They seek the proper way and the special equipment to squeeze every drop from our time and to extract multiple profits from it. They would like to analyze all the ways we move, communicate, think, feel, and relate. And they try to make it clear that the entire working time, which they pay for and whatever happens within it, belongs to the company’s sphere of exploitation. They want to know what even the relationships we develop among ourselves mean. What networks of relationships are formed? Someone talks only with someone else, but that person doesn’t respond much. Another chats with everyone else. What does this sociability mean? Two or three have developed intense relationships? For what purpose is this done? Does this make their work sufficiently productive or not?

Messages that pass through internal communication systems or via the company’s e-mail can already easily be collected and analyzed. But, working in a retail store, in a call center, in an office in the services or IT sector, does not only involve messages exchanged through such systems. The general movement of workers within the company’s premises and the communication between them are important parts of the activity that takes place during working hours. These can certainly be collected by cameras and microphones, but again this is a macro-level recording that cannot provide sufficiently detailed information for analysis. Especially for mass workspaces. While messages that already pass through machines can easily be found on the company’s hard drives, it is not as simple to do this for the rest of the activity. But if, as words are spoken and movements occur, instead of disappearing into the air, they are converted into electrons, if they become information in the form of zeros and ones, they must ultimately go somewhere. They would go to some storage space that certainly would not belong to us, but to whoever has in their possession the appropriate technical means to make the conversion and then store these zeros and ones, as well as the corresponding software, in order to process them. And the issue lies exactly here! Who owns the way we move, communicate, think, feel and relate during working hours? Until now, the answer is certainly ourselves. This is therefore what the bosses’ class claims from us. All these ways of ours, to be converted into data that will not belong to us, but to the company. Having this data in its possession, management will be able to analyze it in order to devise models again for managing our own work. In the case, for example, of the Operational Microscope, each worker when finishing their shift places the device/card on a special base to charge it, but also to transfer the collected data to Hitachi where the analysis will take place. The results that emerge will return to the company. These elements are not entering the sphere of exploitation for the first time now. But, through the quantified recording of this sociality, an even more intense exploitation of them is attempted for the benefit of the bosses. This is a gigantic theft at the expense of our class, which we must not allow.

Pentland, concluding his article in Harvard Business Review, which we referred to earlier, writes:

We can measure individuals against the ideal. […] We envision the entire staff of a company wearing badges (sensors) for an extended period, producing big data, within which we will be able to find patterns for anything from team building to leadership, negotiations, and performance exhibitions. We envision changing the nature of the workplace and perhaps the tools we use to communicate. We believe we can dramatically improve remote work and multicultural teams, which are very determinative for the global economy, by learning their patterns and modifying them. We are beginning to create what I call the “Eye of God” for organizations. But no matter how spiritual this may sound, this vision has its roots in proven evidence and data. It is an amazing vision and it will change the way organizations work.

Does this metaphysical closure, combined with a healthy dose of rationalism, remind you of something? Could this God of Pentland and its eye finally answer the questions that Kevin Kelly of the “Quantified Self movement” posed at the beginning: What kind of creature is man, etc.? However, until the Quantified God prepares its answer, we will consider two simpler questions, as a warm-up. Who plays the role of God here, in the story of Pentland? What is its eye trying to see? The very certain answers to these simple questions, which we attempted to provide above, have already solved all the mysteries for us. The QG can now take its break, because we can already glimpse even the chaos before it, the original question of Kelly (about man, but also about the e-mails in his inbox). Do we recognize this “black hole” that sits behind such melancholic questions, waiting there for those who will be moved more by rational-metaphysical reflections, to lull them deeply in its embrace?

There, they will curl up and have fetishistic dreams of screens made from material that doesn’t scratch, that you caress and devote yourself to, forgetting your pain. They will then be able to indulge in religious faith in technology, as the path of humanity toward perfection, toward eternity, in that era when they will have infinite time to read all their inbox and there will be no spam, nor microbes to bother them.

Having sold our consciousness and trust in our collective capabilities as a class, we could surrender to the magic of consuming the technological garbage of capitalism. We could accept the rhetoric of the bosses’ consultants, that nothing really happened if you give a little more data. It will be for the good, for the improvement of all of us. However, we believe that as much as possible, we should resist and sabotage the invasion of techno-fetishistic practices on our bodies, on ALL OUR OWN TIMES. No matter what, in the end, no matter how much it tries to “quantify” us, no boss will be able to grasp the magnitude and multiplicity of our class’s capabilities.

Shelley Dee
cyborg #02 – 02/2015

  1. LifeLog was a project of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. The goal of the LifeLog idea, according to Wikipedia, was to enable the recording of the “threads” of a person’s life in terms of events, states, and relationships through the analysis of the subject’s experience from the phone calls they have made and the e-mail messages they have read up to every breath they take, step they make, and place they go. From the project proposal itself, as quoted by Wikipedia:
    “LifeLog aims to create a massive electronic database of every activity and relationship in which a person is involved. This should include credit card purchases, websites visited, the content of phone calls and e-mail sent and received, scanned faxes or conventional mail messages sent or received, messages sent and received via mobile, books and magazines read, television and radio program choices, physical location recorded via wearable GPS sensors, biometric data collected from wearable sensors. The ultimate goal from this data recording is to determine preferences, plans, goals and other indicators of intent/purpose.”
    The program was cancelled in 2004 following criticism regarding privacy implications. Generally, the term lifelog or flog is used to describe data storage systems that can automatically and continuously record and archive the informational dimension of a user’s life experiences. ↩︎
  2. The term “absenteeism” refers to lost work hours due to illness (or loafing), while the term “presenteeism” refers to lost productivity when workers go to work, but have performance below average due to any kind of illness (or boredom). ↩︎
  3. Applications that have been built for corporate use:
    Humana Vitality: an application for creating health profiles, for exercising in a healthy lifestyle and good nutrition that are rewarded with gifts and points.
    Keas: a platform with a graphical environment that a company can set up to create a social network between employees where everyone can see how much each one exercised, how many calories they burned, how much they slept, how much they walked, how their cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. are doing.
    Jiff: a platform to motivate employees to make healthy choices, to reduce company expenses and improve its workforce. In a first stage, as stated on the jiff application website, a diagnosis is made to find out what each person suffers from (specifically: frequent emergency visits, insomnia, pregnancy, increased weight, chronic diseases, etc.) and then a personal program is determined for each employee, setting goals – according to their problems – for which they are rewarded with points when they fulfill them. In the end, the company can see on an electronic dashboard the general condition from the participation of the workforce and its own benefits from the case in diagrams. ↩︎