Meet The Person Who Records Every Moment Of His Life Using 700 Sensors
The Engineer
Wearable technologies are catching on quite rapidly and we are witnessing newer wearable gadgets everyday. However, you will find that many of us are still not ready for the transition. Even among those who are willing; not many are as persistent and dedicated as is Chris Dancy. Chris is 45 years old and is from Denver. He has embraced this advancement in technology whole-heartedly and at present, there are 700 sensors that are being run simultaneously; recording his every move and the variations in his mood. Chris is known as the world’s most quantified man because he employs sensors, apps, devices and services to collect data pertaining to himself in real-time along with data on the environment around him. What is the benefit of this all? Well, it allows him to know himself better. All this information has allowed him to improve his life, For example, he lost 45 kg weight by analysing and adjusting how much he eats and moves.
In words of Chris; ‘When I touch something, I try to make sure it’s a something that I can get information out of so I can track, then search it, visualize it and share it with people who might want a piece of it. I know now what to drink, what to eat, when to sleep and when to actually make myself to get up.’
He further said, while comparing this to the hacking of a system; ‘It’s body and mind hacking. Just like we hack computers and any type of data, your body and your mind is the greatest information system humanity has ever known and understanding it makes it hack-able.’ Chris has a myriad of technologies, which belong to the wearable tech family and includes; Pebble Smartwatch, Google Glass and Blue heart rate monitor along with BodyMedia armband.
Chris explained; ‘I realized I was putting a lot of information online and if one of these services went out of business, I would have been without a lot of information that was relevant, at least to me at that time. It really started with me having a desire to digitally collect what I was creating. I just spent the last five years bringing on two to three systems a week.’
Chris is somewhat shocked to see that people haven’t started following in his lead and says; ‘Either they don’t understand the value of the information or it is just something hard for them to break.’ Chris is regularly approached by companies and start ups to help him with their inventions and new gadgets.
He also speculates that the ‘Innernet’ is the next big thing, where ‘innernet’ means information about oneself.
