Newswise — The hottest new consumer tech products are health and fitness gadgets that allow users to monitor their biological activity in excruciating detail. These gadgets count calories burned, log physical activity, grade sleep, and measure such stats as blood pressure and weight, and they send all this data to consumers' smartphones and computers where the information is neatly displayed in graphs. These gadgets could be the next must-have tech accessories, the natural next step beyond smartphones. Now that people have all the information they could ever want about the external world, they are eager for information about their internal selves.
Reporter Emily Waltz wore a collection of these gadgets for two months, and wrote about the experience for IEEE Spectrum. She explains the technology that enables gadgets like the Zeo Sleep Manager and the activity-tracking BodyMedia Fit, and describes the experience of using them. She set out to quantify herself and, along the way, answer the questions: Can these devices really enable people to change their behavior in ways that will help them eat, sleep, and move better? Or are they just new toys?
For a faxed copy of the article ("How I Quantified Myself," by Emily Waltz, IEEE Spectrum, September 2012) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212-419-7561, [email protected].
RSS