Engagement and the quantified self: Uneventful relationships with ghostly companions

Abstract

This chapter looks at the notion of engagement and its interpretation in the development and marketing of self-tracking wearable devices and in the literature on the Quantified Self and gamification. It concludes that the vision provided so far in these contexts imagines a scenario where events are impossible, and the quantification of the self is reduced to a collection of facts about the individual. It is precisely by investigating the polysemy of the term 'engagement' that alternative relationships with our quantified selves could be imagined. This is a necessary practice, in an age when engagement is no longer voluntarily but imposed on the user by invisible forms of tracking. The argument is supported by drawing on a personal, emotional, and 'catastrophic' experience with Nike+ FuelBand.