August 2008

My research focuses primarily on lifestreaming. During the two years I spent in the MFA Design program at University of Texas, I created five iterations of my lifestream website.

My first foray into lifestreaming began by gathering “badges” of all of my web activity. On the homepage of my website I displayed recent Flickr photos, blog posts, 12seconds videos, favorited Google Reader items, Twitter updates, podcast episodes, Tumblr posts, Facebook statuses and advertisements. Although this solution brought my web activity to one place, the various updates could not be viewed together chronologically. They could only be viewed by media or service, which did not create a narrative.

March 2009 | Live project site

Continuing a search for better methods of sharing my life in a website that most accurately represented myself, I discovered the lifestreaming software “Sweetcron”, developed by Yong Fook. I installed the software on my web server, which enabled me to aggregate all of my posts from around the Internet in one place. By importing RSS feeds provided by different web services such as Flickr, Youtube and Google Reader, the posts from each service could be viewed chronologically in context with each other on my website.

I found the advantages of this method of lifestreaming to be personal accountability, process and failure documentation, personal branding, archiving and backup, and revelation of invisible patterns. These factors created an environment conducive to control over individual development and deliberate decision-making.

After this experiment, I began thinking of lifestreaming as a process for improving quality of life, but my evidence was anecdotal, and I did not have concrete data of how my life had improved.

December 2009

After maintaining a general lifestream website, I wanted to devise an experiment that might demonstrate the value of lifestreaming more explicitly. I chose a goal I wanted to achieve (to understand and simplify my personal finances) and created a lifestream site and workflow to visualize, measure and manage all progress made towards the goal. I used this concept of ‘goal-oriented lifestreaming’ (or ‘goalstreaming’) to direct the nature of my updates.

I used a specific workflow to update the website (goalstream) for this experiment, which became my overarching lifestream design methodology. I found that designing specific aspects of one’s life (in this case financial) through lifestreaming can be achieved with the following steps:

1. Document daily activities that are working towards specific goals or projects (e.g., weight loss, saving money, improving athletic endurance).
2. Measure progress towards goals using online tools to make tracking easier (e.g., calorie counting websites, financial tools such as Wesabe, iPhone applications that track fitness activities using GPS).
3. Publicly share documentation to get community feedback, remain accountable for choices, and help others in similar positions.
4. Grow reputation and confidence by keeping a public record of progress on a lifestream website.
5. Identify patterns and systems that are interfering with growth (e.g., the corn industry contributing to weight gain by selling the corn syrup in soft drinks; 14 credit cards creating debt; work restrictions preventing exercise). Attempt to monetize what is learned with premium lifestream content subscriptions.

Although there are privacy issues that arise with sharing any information online, the primary value of goalstreaming is that it is public. By sharing our lives with others, we are motivated, we are held accountable for what we say, we receive tangible help, and we create a sense of ‘being in it together.’ And as one makes progress towards her goal, she becomes an expert on the subject for others to learn from with a portfolio of work to prove it. To read the complete report on this lifestream experiment, download “The Eternal Return: the Financial Goalstream Case Study Report”.

January 2010 | Live project site

My final lifestream site design experiment at UT became an investigation of lifestreaming as a life design methodology for wellness. I wanted to test how publicly monitoring my diet, exercise, finances, lifestream design work, and spirituality might be combined with my social network, in order to make me more accountable for my actions, increase my self-discipline, and strengthen my reputation. In doing this, I might also be better able to recognize and eradicate the patterns and social structures that negatively impact my life. By addressing these main categories in my life, I hoped to increase my overall wellness.

Although my physical well-being improved dramatically during this experiment, the most significant discovery was that of lifestream filtration. From the beginning of my lifestream experiments, organization and hierarchy was problematic because of the amount of updates a lifestream creates. I removed all lifestream posts aside from longer writings and videos from my lifestream homepage in an attempt to deal with the deluge of content I create every day. This method of filtering a lifestream might be particularly useful those who wish to develop a larger readership.

Lifestream filtration is imperative to make a more sophisticated experience for the lifestream reader. By suppressing the majority of my lifestream updates from my main homepage on my website, I am motivated to create more thoughtful, long form, reader-friendly content more regularly.

May 2010

To illustrate the idea that lifestreaming can be a life design methodology for wellness, I chose to print the majority of my lifestream and wallpaper a room with it for my MFA thesis exhibition. The exhibition was intended to reveal the enormity of published material in my lifestream.

I chose to print and categorize my lifestream posts so that I could visualize how much time I spent on each category, and identify milestones along the way. I categorized the posts by placing a different transparent layer of color on each category of posts. Posts that were related to food were colored yellow. Posts related to spirituality were colored purple. Posts about exercise were coded red. Financial posts were green. And lifestream design posts were covered with a teal color. I also hoped to demonstrate that by lifestreaming, I was able to direct the path of my life in specific ways for each lifestream category.

After hanging my printed lifestream in the gallery space and seeing the entire thing at once, I realized that the majority of my lifestream updates are about what I’m eating. This was disturbing to me initially, because I had hoped for a more well-rounded display. But as I thought about it, I realized it was an ideal result. Eating is something everyone does, usually multiple times a day. What we eat affects every single area of our lives, from our health to our self-esteem to our productivity. For me, figuring out how to eat right was the first step I needed to take on my own path to wellness. I am pleased to have the lifestream installation communicate to other people the importance of food awareness.

Discussing the installation with visitors at the gallery opening showed me that the installation helped people better understand exactly what a lifestream is, but did not necessarily make them want to lifestream themselves. The large amount of food photos in particular created discussion of how mundane it can be to see what other people are eating. The food photos were effective in that manner though–it seemed like an effective way to begin a conversation about the issue of healthy eating, without having to pass judgement on the visitor’s own eating habits.

Conclusions

I wish to augment David Gelernter’s original concept of the lifestream, though not by suggesting a code-based or technical modification. I propose a theoretical shift which positions the lifestream as a holistic life design methodology for wellness. To design one’s life is to creatively plan and execute a desired, habitual pattern language for living. By tracking and discussing daily habits and activities, we expose routine and patterns and are able to critically evaluate them. Making them visible and open to discussion is a step towards change and development. We can regain control and take responsibility for all actions having to do with wellness in one’s life. So much of wellness stems from being disciplined to make good choices, and lifestreaming makes every decision matter.

As we become more connected to each other through the Internet, we increasingly become a single organism of information and action. The Internet may enable us to transcend reality as we know it, by connecting us together to form one entity with millions of individual perceiving nodes. Transparent, public and authentic communication of personal experience can have profound effects on the individual, and may encourage collective social action when a critical mass of behavioral change occurs. I call my lifestreaming practice “utopian lifestreaming”, because I am aware of the risks and consequences of publishing so openly, but believe we can achieve a healthier and happier society by understanding the individual realities of every single person. Translating that understanding into language a computer can understand may contribute to the Technological Singularity, when transcending our biological limitations would mean a sudden, radical improvement of health for all.

In aggregate, billions of people, worldwide, updating their status will transcend what some may call a fad to become something much more meaningful – a massive archive of quantified human behavior. What might the world would look like if everyone was a lifestreamer? If we could quantify and experience the lives and unique perspectives of every person in the world, what understanding might we gain? If 6,000,000,000 people were to lifestream on a regular basis, not only might that trigger Kurzwell’s Technological Singularity, but enable anyone to instantly quantify all human behavior for any given moment in time. Power hierarchies as we know them would collapse. We could all effectively “take the pulse” of the world–and not just for marketing purposes!