Daily Data
In a recent episode of This American Life, a writer interviews a middle-aged man in a middle America town somewhere about his habit of recording everything that happens to him. Everything. Every day for some decades, this man records the weather, to whom he speaks on the telephone and how many times, which cousin he runs into at church, and so on. His cryptic abbreviations (“SX” means what it sounds like) and annotations of daily life fill dozens of volumes. He has a massive collection of pens that he asserts is essential to support this habit.
It reminded me of former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), who, according to Wikipedia,
has a quirky habit of keeping a detailed log of his daily activities on color-coded notebooks, which some say may have cost him a spot on past vice-presidential tickets. He keeps all of these notes in a file cabinet arranged by month and year.
(The Wikipedia author offers an implicit diagnosis by linking from this passage to the page for “hypergraphia” which is an overwhelming urge to write.) As of 2003, he had filled over 4,000 notebooks since his first run for governor of Florida in 1977.
This brings me to today’s discovery: the Feltron 2008 Annual Report, a compendium of statistics, factoids, maps, and trivia underlying the daily life of Nicholas Feltron (a New York designer). Essentially, it is a beautifully designed summary of the 4,000 notebooks. I think this man actually used a pedometer (three, if I read correctly) to record every step he took last year. Wonderful!
Even better, Feltron has made this “hyperstatia” available to the masses on Daytum, where users can record data on anything and everything. Number and location of coffees drunk, wake up time, miles travelled in commuting, and so on. See this random user’s page for an example. In private beta at the moment, I’ll let you know when I can secure an invite, and I’ll pay someone a generous sum to devise an embed-able version.
UPDATE: Back in December, the Wall Street Journal published a profile on Feltron and the phenomenon of tracking one’s daily activities online.
