Automated Diaries

Author: Jill Walker Rettberg (University of Bergen)

Venue: Chapter 4 of *Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves*, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 45–60

DOI: 10.1057/9781137476661_4

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Abstract

Today's diary writes itself for you. Apps can turn your smartphone into an automated diary that will keep track of where you go, sort your photos for you and pull in your social media updates to generate detailed records of your life. Lifelogging cameras like the Narrative Clip are clipped to your shirt and automatically take a photo every 30 seconds throughout the day. This chapter discusses the information and images that these devices record and the ways in which they present the data to try to make it meaningful for the user. Are our devices 'active cognizers', to use N. Katherine Hayles' term, making us cyborg selves collaborating with our machines? How do these devices and apps filter our lives?

Relevance to Narrative

The chapter is one of the earliest scholarly first-person accounts of using the Narrative Clip, which appears thirteen times in the chapter. Rettberg writes: "The Narrative Clip is one of the first consumer products that promises to visually capture all of your life"; describes it as "a descendent of custom built wearable cameras such as those pioneered by Steve Mann"; and recounts her own experience wearing it: "The first day I wore my Narrative Clip I fastened it to my shirt at chest height. Downloading the images at the end of the day, I found dozens of photos of trees and clouds, some obscured by my long hair partially covering the lens", including reflections on how the camera failed to capture her children in frame and on the aesthetic of its automatic snapshots.