Augmented Self : Digital Quantified-Self Practices As Socio-Cognitive System of Self-Regulation "CANCELLED"

With the evolution of mobile technologies, digital quantified-self practices have increased considerably, particularly in the field of health (to record walk, weight, sleep, etc.). The measure of self and its performance are not new. The fields of Sport and medical Self-tracking (Wiederhold, 2012) have included the value of these practices for a long time.  The new is their generalization to the general public, and their features more and more simple and sophisticated of recording, storing, datavisualisation and sharing data to evaluate its progressions and to change their own behaviours (Arruabarrena & Quettier, to be published).

The Quantified self is a new form of self-attention (Pharabod , 2013) mobilizing the body and human cognition mediated. It is first an act of measurement to ditigitalize body and cognitive data. But it is also a "performative experience" over time linking the user to himself, and the user to the society (Levinas, 1967). On the one hand, Quantifief self crystallize"successives states of self" (Bergson, 1888), usually invisible in the stream of consciousness. On the other hand, thanks to the features of sharing data, the relationships peer-to-peer between users through social networks have a significant influence on motivation, but also on the ability of users to change (Lewin, 1967). The QS-technologies allow users to reclaim their social time, and in the reflexive way, their biological, cognitive and social rhythms.

This communication will expose a research program based on the ethnographic study of digital quantified-self practices as socio-cognitive system (Quettier , 2007). This approach to the embodied use allows to overcome the dualisms between body-mind to focus on the self as a mode of knowledge. The aim of this research is making sense to how are articulated socio-technical and symbolic mediation in the self-regulation, and in wider sense the construction of self.