A Scale that Tweets Your Weight? Meet the Quantified Self

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/06/17/Anand_Giridharadas_Global_Media_Ideas

A scale that automatically tweets your weight? How about a website that analyzes the specifics of your love life? Journalist Anand Giridharadas reflects on burgeoning technologies that facilitate the quantification of daily life, and suggests users consider the deeper implications of the "quantified self."

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As social networks become more pervasive and change the way we interact, New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas asks what happens "to our minds and our hearts when we become digital people?" Is the social web the world finds itself tangled in a totally new experience?

Anand Giridharadas doesn't think so. He draws parallels between the "ambient sociability" of village life in Bombay with the sprawling online communities we now interact with daily. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Anand Giridharadas is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first book, a work of narrative nonfiction about his return to the India that his parents left, is forthcoming from Times Books in early 2011. It is titled India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking.

He is a columnist for The New York Times and its global edition, the International Herald Tribune: his Currents column explores fresh ideas, global culture and the social meaning of technology. In 2009, he completed a four-and-a-half-year tour as a foreign correspondent in India for The Times and the Herald Tribune, as their first Bombay presence in the modern era. He reported on India's transformation, Bollywood, corporate takeovers, terrorism, outsourcing, poverty and democracy. He was appointed a columnist in 2008, writing the Letter from India series.

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[Phelan666]

Anand should tweet the weight of his hair.

[MegF142857]

Hmm... should do stats on whether FORA clips make me think "Why did I waste my time watching that?" Kind of think I already know the answer. Time to unsubscribe to these little clips.

[MrNottheword]

Meet the quantified self. #metrics #xmedialab #nookie

[vdmerwe]

@MegF142857 I know I'm not the only one who was initially attracted because they appeared to be like TED talks, but not 20 mins/day. It has however transpired that they are 99% bullcrap!

[PokerVertigo]

@vdmerwe Make sure you wipe, and use a hand santizer.

[kreal1]

When u quantify everything ur mind changes and the way you perceive things u view the world as freaking numbers. If everythings just numbers u miss the point of allot of things. Freaking nerds wanna count how many times they get laid. Look at his hair man fix that first playa.

[acr08807]

@Phelan666 His hair isn't that big. He just has an unusually large head.

[Phelan666]

THIRST. ohshit i just quenchified myself.