Programmable self is the combination of a digital motivation hack, like StickK, with a digital system that tracks behavior, like Fitbit (that’s the Quantified Self part). You have to have both. Recently, for example, Stickk started supporting the use of the Withings Scale to support weight entries. Withings is a Wi-Fi-enabled scale that broadcasts your weight automagically to the Withings servers. From there, Withings will send your weight generally wherever you want: HealthVault, other personal health record (PHR) systems, or over to Stickk.com. With that feature, Stickk became a programmable-self platform.
(Via O’Reilly Radar)
That said, this reminds me of that early 80s gamer culture where you had to type your games in before you could play. Then as now, only a very small proportion of the population was able to participate, which limited its reach until the tools were mastered by true artists like Shigeru Miyamoto.
What will be the Super Mario of the programmable self?
