Quantified self movement

a number-based fitness life

Abstract

This article describes the ways in which users of a fitness app that prescribes personalized exercise guide their behavior through the numbers generated by self-tracking. Based on the Actor-Network Theory, interactions between user, fitness app and the network to which it is integrated were analyzed. The results suggest self-experimentation as a common behavior and two perspectives of data-driven behavior: those that follow the insights recommended by the technology, albeit with adaptations; and those who perform more consistent experiments, characterized as biohackers. Many of the biohackers also become digital influencers, and form a kind of collaboration network on social media. It is concluded that users, as entrepreneurs of themselves, guide their behavior through numbers, produce reports that involve data from various human activities, through different software and practice self-experimentation.