Before the advent of scales, people didn’t need to weigh themselves

Imagine how many stars there are in the entire universe that humans can observe. You would probably think that it is countless. However, the total number of data bytes on this blue star we live in is 40 times that of "countless" to date. Statistics in 2018 show that 90% of the world's data was generated in the previous two years. Big data is still getting bigger and bigger, and there is still no sign of slowing down.

People's desires, emotions, and privacy are also undergoing earth-shaking changes in the data age. But this huge change is hidden and difficult to detect. Faced with the flood and the beast, people seem to be indifferent and know nothing about it.

What are technology and digital technology taking away from us? Perhaps we can get a glimpse of this from the wearable devices that continuously collect human body data every day.

What can wearable devices tell us? | pixabay

Before the advent of weighing scales,

People don't need to weigh themselves

Before wearable devices emerged to help us monitor our body data, there was already another tool that everyone was accustomed to doing a similar thing: the scale .

Standing on a scale to measure your weight from time to time has become an integral part of modern life, but few people have an answer to when the need for "accurate weight measurement" began and why this need arose.

We who have been measuring our weight since childhood may not be able to imagine that it was not until the end of the 19th century that some doctors began to record the weight of their patients. Since then, weighing scales have slowly moved from clinics to public streets and squares, and finally into homes. However, the act of "weighing" has become a part of personal lifestyle habits only since the beginning of the 20th century.

Public coin-operated weighing scales on the streets of Paris in the late 1880s. Reference [1]

In 1885, the first public coin-operated scale (penny scale) appeared in Germany. When people stood on the scale to weigh themselves, they seemed to forget that the main reason for the appearance of coin-operated scales in public places was that businesses were seeking a larger market to squeeze out more profits. Providing people with data was just a means of making money. However , people's demand for "accurate measurement of body data" was quietly built up after unconsciously inserting coins/weighing , and at the same time, many living habits and daily rules were rapidly changed.

In the 1920s, different types of home scales first appeared on the American market. Along with the popularity of weighing scales came the growing double standards for gender differences and the growing weight anxiety of women. Advertisements for these home scales often featured women in provocative poses and pajamas, making society's requirements for women's body shapes increasingly strict.

“Only the scale can tell you the truth about your body” | Reference [1]

But before that, in the early years of the 20th century, weight-related marketing was mainly aimed at men's bodies . The best-selling dietary guides at the time mainly introduced foods associated with "masculinity" such as red meat and alcoholic beverages. Katharina Vester, a professor of American history at American University, analyzed newspapers and magazines at the time and found that until the 1920s, when scales entered homes, the overall cultural atmosphere did not promote any idea that "women should diet". The outside world encouraged them to present themselves as healthy, beautiful and plump.

Advertising teaches people "how to desire"

In 1925, home scales became more popular, with the main selling point being that they were more accurate than public scales. Ads showed young girls in their underwear standing on home scales, with the tagline: "She doesn't have to guess - she knows!" Home scale ads promised customers a "more scientific way to lose weight," and that way was "you have to know your weight better, and the occasional weigh-in on an unreliable public scale won't solve the problem."

“Buy a home scale to lose weight more scientifically” | Reference [1]

A century later, the same advertising routine appeared on another product that measures the human body - wearable devices. Today's technology companies use people's "subjective feelings" as a contrast to show the "objectivity and accuracy" of wearable devices as machines. They say that these devices can "externalize" the vague feelings that are originally "hidden inside the body" and let people understand them accurately and directly. "Track your sleep, actions, and rest, so that you can fully understand more accurate information." It sounds like wearable devices are like a personal doctor who is always by your side.

“It knows me better than I know myself” | References [1]

In the 19th century, public scales on the streets of Paris began to have such instructions: "Weigh yourself often, understand yourself, and live a better life." This is still the core marketing strategy of many technology companies today: more precise monitoring can enable us to better manage ourselves, so as to achieve our ideal image and live an ideal life.

Commercials will directly link a simple data monitoring behavior, a mechanical measuring device, to "better self-awareness", and then progress to a "more desirable lifestyle". Charming young girls, strong and energetic sports boys, affectionate couples, elite people with higher social status wearing decent high-end suits, all wear their watches and bracelets. Phrases such as "it knows me better than I know myself" and "I become better when I wear it" also appear incredibly consistently in most advertisements. It seems that as long as you click to pay, you can control your body and become healthy.

However, data does not have such a powerful effect. In fact, even the basic premise of "whether the data is really accurate enough" is uncertain.

Numbers are gradually replacing feelings

Is wearable monitoring really reliable? Lisa Cadmus-Bertram, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pointed out that the calculation of steps may be increased due to irrelevant arm movements, and the calculation of heart rate during exercise may become inaccurate due to the interference of sweat. When calculating calorie consumption, the muscle-to-fat ratio, which is extremely relevant to calculating resting energy consumption, basically depends on the algorithm to guess.

What is even more questionable is whether something as abstract and subjective as sleep quality can be simply concluded using parameters such as heart rate and nighttime activity. The answer given by scientists is that this calculation method is not accurate, and the best method is still to measure brain waves, or record nighttime eye movements, breathing patterns, and blood oxygen levels, but these are not what wearable devices can do.

Wearable monitoring is often not accurate enough | Reference [2]

In a context where most people believe that "technology and numbers are more objective and accurate than people's general feelings", people's autonomy and judgment are constrained or even deprived by machines when using devices. Many people not only do not improve their sleep after using wearable devices, but even suffer from sleep anxiety.

I believe many people have similar experiences: after waking up, they immediately check the sleep quality data on their mobile phones to judge whether they slept well or not; if the machine says it is good, they will be full of energy, and if the machine says it is bad, they will be listless. In fact, this is no different from the feelings of many people before and after standing on the scale. When a person with eating disorders was asked, "How would you feel if you don't weigh yourself?", she answered, "Before I get on the scale, I basically don't feel anything. How I feel depends entirely on the number on the scale !" At present, this may not only be an individual case of a person with eating disorders, but a common experience for everyone.

People’s subjective feelings are replaced by numbers on the screen | Reference [2]

If we want to improve our sleep, scientists still suggest that we trust our bodies, not a device. This is a powerful example of breaking the illusion created by advertising: data is just data, it is not necessarily more objective and accurate, and it does not necessarily help us understand ourselves better. On the contrary, at some moments, we will be constrained by numbers and eventually become their slaves.

Privacy is silently mastered by others

In the case of the scale, people buy the scale in exchange for data about their weight. Consumers who buy wearable devices also get their body data, but in fact, the technology companies that sell the devices not only make profits, but also gain access to user data. The data exchange of wearable devices is not one-way like the original scale. In the exchange process, users get much less than large companies.

Wearable devices can monitor all kinds of data of users' whole body 24 hours a day. If the data of one indicator of a user over the years is compared to a straight line, then the sum of all his data is a plane, and technology companies have the entire space of all the data of all users over a long period of time . However, this huge space is completely invisible to individual users, while technology companies and other third parties can conduct various types of research and investigation on this invisible space to obtain various important information about the classification and stratification of the entire population. In the absence of individual decision-making power, this information may in turn endanger the private interests of the public.

Technology companies not only make profits, but also gain access to the entire space of user data丨Unsplash

Kate Crawford of Microsoft Research writes that “people have separated a second, completely separate narrative from their actual lives—their data,” which is now often considered more real than life. Just as the emergence of scales in the 20th century defined what “ideal weight” is, wearable devices may also build a new social order about “what is standard” and “what is normal.” Cigna, a large American health insurance company, once distributed wearable devices to their client companies, analyzed the physical health data of the company’s employees, and then increased the insurance premiums of unhealthy employees.

The images created by precisely designed advertising narratives are gradually "teaching" people how to generate specific needs. The cold numbers displayed on the bright screens of different sizes on the desk, fingertips, and wrists are slowly replacing people's feelings. Those behaviors that were originally unquantifiable have all become numbers today, and are constantly monitored and controlled by institutions that are beyond our reach.

Are these small wristbands, as they say, a personal trainer and a personal doctor, or are they the electronic anklets of a giant panopticon? In this era of big data, we can only say that it is probably both.

References

[1]Crawford, K. et al. (2015) Our metrics, ourselves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device. European Journal of Cultural Studies. [Online] 18 (4-5), 479–496.

[2]https://www.digitaltrends.com/wearables/how-accurate-are-fitness-trackers/

[3]https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/do-sleep-trackers-work-app_l_5d2e7c5be4b085eda5a38aa9

Author: Carcosa

Editor: odette

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