Categories: Articles

The Virtual Self And The New Trend Of Self-Tracking

Episode #305 of Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Now, with the ubiquity of smartphones and mobile connectedness, it has never been easier to share with the world our each and every move (look no further than Facebook‘s one billion dollar acquisition of Instagram). And we’re publishing our lives. All of the time – in text, images, audio and video – for the world to see. In fact, it’s happening more and more with each and every passing day. Why are we doing all of this self-tracking? It’s a topic that has fascinated Nora Young for a long while. The founding host and producer of CBC‘s Definitely Not The Opera and the current host of Spark (a radio show and podcast about the intersection of technology and culture – and it’s one of my personal favorites) spent this past year digging deeper into self-tracking and what this means about our society and who we are. The culmination of her work is the recently published book, The Virtual Self – How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest on Spark on multiple occasions, so it was a lot of fun to turn the tables and interview Nora. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast #305.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.