Meanings
- uncountableA movement to promote the constant tracking of one's physical activity, diet, and other personal metrics in order to gain insights for self-improvement; the practice itself.
“We wanted to make a mainstream product for people who are not that into sports or the quantified self,” he says.
2013 September 19, Stuart Dredge, quoting Sampo Karjalainen, “After 2.5m iPhone downloads, activity-tracking app Moves comes to Android”, in The Guardian3 more examples
The quantified self movement—the idea that tracking metrics about yourself can lead to self-improvement—appears to be gathering steam.
2013 March 27, Chris Hollindale, “Nike+ FuelBand and Google Glass: what next for the 'quantified self'?”, in The Guardian, retrieved 10 May 2022The quantified self, then, is more than a practice of self-monitoring; it suggests a shift to sharing such information for collectivized profiles of groups that serve as authorities on themselves.
2014, Anna Poletti, Julie Rak, editors, Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, University of Wisconsin Pres, →ISBN, page 88As Nafus (2016) points out, at the heart of the quantified self is an understanding of the individual as being ultimately responsible for taking control of their lives. This type of belief lends itself to neoliberal fantasy, ignoring how governments, corporations and others dictate the framework in which we live.
2020, Phil Jones, Bodies, Technologies and Methods, Routledge, →ISBNSynonyms: QS
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA movement to promote the constant tracking of one's physical activity, diet, and other personal metrics in order to gain insights for self-improvement; the practice itself.
Origin
Popularized by Wired editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly in 2007.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
quantified self. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/quantified%20self
“quantified self.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/quantified%20self. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “quantified self,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/quantified%20self.
Source: quantified self on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.