 Now one of the recurring themes of modern life is the rapid pace of technical innovation. Your top of the line smartphone is never top of the line for very long. One man who believes he is at the tip of the spear where technology is concerned is Chris Dancy. He utilises over 300 sensors and systems to track, analyse and optimise. A lot of jargon here, everything from his house to his health. The internet is dead, the internet, the information of you has the future. People will create an assisted reality created on demand as you need. There are no such thing as thought leaders. Serotonin is a thought leader. I'm very pleased to say that the most connected man on the planet is on the line. Connected. Hope he's connected anyway. Chris, welcome. Yes, hopefully I am connected, that would be. But it happens. You are indeed. It works. This connection worked. How has monitoring yourself so profoundly changed your life? Gosh, you know, for me it just really was about a sense of awareness and what I was doing and how I was living. So much of my life and so much of most of our lives are spent in states of distraction away from the things right in front of us or around us. But this has been true long before we had technology. And it started with a weight loss project, didn't it? Yeah, well, it originally started because I was afraid I was going to lose all the information I was creating online. So I wanted a way to archive it. And once I did that, I realized it was kind of neat. I could also archive other bits of my life. And once I had about two years worth of information from lots of different systems from spending to how I was sleeping, then I thought, oh, I wonder if I could lose weight just by understanding patterns of information in my life. And that's when the weight loss actually happened. I'm still not quite picturing how you're monitoring yourself. Are you constantly, are there loads of wires connected to your body feeding into computers? Come on, describe what's going on. So yeah, so basically there's two bits to it. So there's the sensors anyone wears. You'll see a lot of people with a Fitbit or a lot of smartphones now have the ability to track your actual movement. So everything from a heart rate sensor to a motion sensor to a sensor for your posture. So a bunch of these sensors I wear constantly. And then there's the environment around you. So a lot of homes today and a lot of offices have smart objects. So sometimes a room monitor. All of these sensors working together give you a holistic view of your health. All I did, and I think what's so interesting to most people was I said, all this information belongs together so you can see it in one space. And when you can see it together, you can see that there's patterns that you have. But things also start to relate to each other. So the air quality in your house actually has a direct effect on how you drive. Right, and how is it, you know, tell me how it's revolutionized your life and why everyone should be connected? I don't think it's for everyone yet. I think everyone is connected to a lot of systems. I just don't think people consider how many systems they're connected to at any one time. For me, you know, I think the health was probably the biggest revolution. You know, as a 45-year-old adult, I'd struggle with my weight, my whole life, sleeping. I also found time to start to meditate, to understand meditative states a little bit better by understanding how my body reacted to them. And then finally, I think the most profound thing was on top of those two really great health benefits was the ability to focus. Where are you, Mark? You're in San Diego, I believe. No? Oh, sorry, Mark. I beg your pardon. Mark, I'm getting confused with my guest, Chris. Yeah, right now I'm in San Diego. I was speaking at a conference here. I just actually just left London. I was just there the day before yesterday at the wearable tech conference. OK, is there something about being on the West Coast of America that makes it easier to be connected? Oh, no, no. You can be connected anywhere. It just depends on what you're doing with the information. I was just in London, like I said two days ago, and I was very connected while I was there. And it sounds like a very sophisticated form of self-medication in a way. Mark McKinnon, who's in Moscow. Does it tempt you to wire yourself up to a thousand probing computers? Quite the opposite. Maybe it's being in the same city as Edward Snowden, but I find myself thinking that the NSA now has quite a bit of data on Mr. Dancy's cholesterol level. Sounds like the opposite of the direction I wanted to head in. All right, what about you, Gat? I do find it absolutely fascinating. I read some news recently that Google has started working with Ray Kurzweil, the father of transhumanism and all the kind of cyborg business. And I think that this kind of idea of wearable, plugged-in technology is fascinating. I don't think it will be a thing for the general population until they can make it relevant to the two things that people like, which is basically porn weight loss. So this is where all innovation basically seems to start in my experience. But yeah, I think it is absolutely fascinating where things can go. Does it depend on how much of an embracer of new technology you are? I'm assuming you are one of those. I kind of am, and I'm kind of not. Are you a Google Glasses kind of one? Oh, hell no. I'm not particularly interested in that. I'm too disorganised for technology. I struggled with the same smartphone for about three years. I've only just got a new one. But there will be early adopters, but I'd rather see whether it works and whether it's actually beneficial for me before I get on board. Chris, do you have all the latest gadgets in your life? Are you a right-up-to-date smartphone sort of man then? Yeah, I do. I'm fortunate that I actually, yeah. But like, you know, like Kat said, I am a Google Glasser. You know, a lot of, at least here in the United States, a lot of people are wearing health fitness bands, whether they be Fitbits or body media devices or Jawbones or Nike has one. A lot of people are wearing them. I think it's very easy to see the point of those. Yeah, so there's really no difference between wearing one of those and then saying, is there a correlation between that and how much music I listen to today? The problem is I think most people are unaware of the relationships or the informations in their lives. And as far as surveillance, I think there's so much of it. You know, Edward Snowden and I think, you know, Julio Sange in many cases, exposed the massive amounts of surveillance and information that our government had on us. I think instead of feeling surveilled, I feel like I at least am aware of what they possibly could be getting about me. And that to me feels liberating and empowering. Chris Dancy, lots of food for thought. Thank you for giving it to us and thanks for coming on the program. Chris Dancy, the world's most connected man live from San Diego in the US. You're listening to the BBC World Service.