hacking h(app)iness

Hacking h(app)iness, Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking It Can Change the World, by John C. Havens, Tarcher/Penguin 2014

Is your “quantified self” an e-blast of dangerously digitized bits of your heart and your balance sheet scattered over an area bigger than the Indian Ocean?  Do you feel that maybe when you opened that first on-line account, then added Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, that somehow you were surrendering any control that remained in your earthly life?  Well, as my mother the original Mill Girl used to say, “Too late now!”  hah….

It’s all true.  Just think of yourself as a contributor to one vast crowd-sourced marketing campaign – and the sooner you surrender every last bit of your buying habits and preferences, the quicker your web retailer can provide just the perfect, and I do mean perfect package, boxed, taped and dropped right on your front steps, two-day shipping included. But it’s bigger than becoming an up-paid data-mined marketing information source.  You want to get paid – that’s right – compensated for your internet value.  Humph, now that’s a different matter….

Author John C. Havens, a contributing writer to Mashable, advises that when we recapture control of our own quantified self’s data, we will better understand ourselves and increase our happiness.  And happiness and joy is what The Mill Girl really cares about now – happiness, joy, chocolate.

So let’s go for it – let’s see how we can reverse this seemingly inevitable self-quantified self rip-off. 

Havens provides three examples:

          Somerville, Massachusetts (a formerly Blue Collar town located next to Cambridge) utilized the country’s first Happiness Survey, and, based on resident’s feedback, decided to add more public green spaces to increase the happiness of the community overall;

          A UK app called “Mappiness” tracks daily user response as to how they are feeling and where they are located to create a table of when and where the user is happiest – kind of ends the eternal quest for “the key to happiness,” doesn’t it?

          Intel’s Digital Health Group created a mobile app that asked users their mood multiple times per day and offered physical relaxation exercises.  After a month-long study, participants showed an increased emotional awareness and lowered stress levels. 

But it’s a slippery slope this digitized transaction world, and reading the “Terms of Service” small print is tooooo hardddd.  Havens advises more caution, stronger willpower - “Be Accountable – Be informed about your personal data and stop giving it away!...” and “Be Proactive.  By identifying the behaviors that define our purpose and increase our well-being, we’ll be inspired to help others as a means of spreading the happiness we’ve discovered for ourselves.”  

Havens is partnered with the city of Reading, Pa to pilot the Happiness survey, along with results focused on created a Wellbeing Index – check it out.  We’re looking forward to learning more about this author’s activist digital ideology.