Datachondria: Better Living Through Data

Welcome to Datachondria, a blog about living.

Here you’ll find a diverse crowd holding an open conversation — with each other and with the void — about data, technology, information, and the way we live now.

You’ll find us writing as users, consumers, participants, citizens, parents — not as industry insiders or high-window theorists. Although from time to time we’ll probably do that too.

We’ll talk about the exciting implications of a new technology for day-to-day living — and the frustrating holes in the user experience. We’ll write about things that individuals, businesses, governments, and organizations do with data: the things they do well, the things they could do better, and the things they fail to do at all. About the things that could improve our lives in ways trivial and superficial or ways vast and life-changing.

We’ll be asking questions about the implications and complications of technology for personal living, social conduct, and public society. The fears and anxieties that new technologies provoke. The implications for our physical day-to-day lives and for the digital manifestations of self that we use to represent ourselves. How will this help me find my keys? How will this help me structure my personal finances, stay in touch with my friends, discover new music, and avoid the kid who stalked me in high school? What does this mean for how I communicate, or how I make decisions about my work? Does this change the way I think about etiquette, public policy, and whether Nirvana really were a good band? (They were not.) [Yes they were. - ed.]

The relationship between our lives — personal and communal — and the technologies we use is a two-way process, a constant conversation. We’ll be recording some of the dialogue and choosing the soundtrack. Datachondria. Better living through data. Better data through living.