{"id":4495,"date":"2020-11-02T18:07:05","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T23:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/?p=4495"},"modified":"2020-11-03T08:43:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T13:43:51","slug":"i-didnt-realize-that-iphone-pickups-are-data-exhaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/i-didnt-realize-that-iphone-pickups-are-data-exhaust\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t realize that iPhone “pickups” are data exhaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

For our data journal assignment, I transferred data from my iPhone’s battery and activity pages and extracted data from my SugarWod app (my gym’s tracking app). Here is the link to the spreadsheet<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1Xh992dbhlvU-JV-2-xfVM744YW9924r0JEVBFdVG3Go\/edit?usp=sharing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

When I started this assignment, I initially was interested in looking at my google searching data. However, when I looked into accessing it, I learned that my data tracking was turned off; I remembered that a friend of mine had turned it off last year when I was trying to purchase airline tickets. She told me that google or other websites are able to see what flights you are looking for, and therefore raises the price. Because I didn\u2019t have any google data that I could access, I turned to data that apps and my iPhone collect.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The data I looked at I seemed to have varying levels of access; for example, my SugarWod app enables me to download a spreadsheet of my data with one tap: it is seamlessly emailed to me. However, my iPhone data is available in pictorial or numerical form but I could not find a way to download it into a condensed, spreadsheet form. Therefore, I decided to transfer the pictorial data into a spreadsheet. I will also attach images to show how this data is oftentimes shown in bar charts, and is now a \u201cwidget\u201d feature of the new iPhone update. This data is intelligible, as when you click on different bars on the chart it highlights the specific data it contains, but it is bothersome to me that I am not quite sure why the iPhone gathers this data if I don\u2019t allow apple to collect my data and I\u2019m personally unable to download it. Conversely, after realizing through this exercise that SugarWod easily exports data, I\u2019m thinking that this feature was central in the creation of the app. However, I am uncertain who has access to this data. It is not clear to me whether SugarWod collects this data or even if my gym, which I \u201cjoin\u201d through the app, is able to see all of the content in my app.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The design of iPhone data collection is very vague in categorizing data which makes me question the data holes that are in this design. For example, my iPhone tells me that on October 27th, I had 6.7 hours of activity: about 3 hours with my screen on, about 4 hours with my screen off. But, there are 12 hours in a day. What is happening for the rest of those hours, if they aren\u2019t included in the \u201cscreen off\u201d activity. There are inherently holes in this data collection, but it is presented as if it depicts the whole story of iPhone activity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of time and space, I was a bit unsettled when realizing that the iPhone collects \u201cpickups;\u201d to me, this data wasn\u2019t only symbolic of when I use my phone, but indicates when I am asleep and waking up each day. It inherently reveals my daily routine in a very convoluted way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew that my data from SugarWod was inherently \u201cmeasurable:\u201d I input numbers that correspond with my workouts. However, I realized from my iPhone data that some things are measurable that I did not think to be possible (I\u2019m thinking about the pickups specifically here).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am drawn to this idea of \u201cpickups\u201d in depicting my daily routine; a visualization that I would be interested in creating would be documenting different locations in which I picked up my phone. Each pick up could be a dot on a map, with the size indicating the amount of times the phone was picked up in that location. The iPhone shows a bar chart as a timeline of this, showing what times of day pickups occur most frequently.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel like the \u201cpixelated person\u201d that emerges from the data is one of \u201chard data.\u201d I recently listened to a podcast that talked about the presence of \u201chard data\u201d vs \u201csoft data\u201d with soft data being tied to an individual\u2019s \u201cless quantifiable self,\u201d like their emotions. The types of data that I looked at are easily comparable to others (many people have iPhones and workout); however, I\u2019ve been thinking about how, being in a sport that is largely driven by \u201cdata\u201d in times, I was always told to not let my numbers define me. I think these questions loop back to our conversation of what constitutes a person, and if data availability has come to define that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For our data journal assignment, I transferred data from my iPhone’s battery and activity pages and extracted data from my SugarWod app (my gym’s tracking app). Here is the link to the spreadsheet: https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1Xh992dbhlvU-JV-2-xfVM744YW9924r0JEVBFdVG3Go\/edit?usp=sharing When I started this assignment, I initially was interested in looking at my google searching data. However, when I looked into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4535,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions\/4535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant347-f20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}