#QuantifiedBaby? Why not?! What anxious parents of newborns wouldn’t want that extra “automatic layer of vigilance” from sensors updating and alerting them of their child’s vital stats? But is it too much? New parents already tend to be neurotic. Will more and frequent data make them less or more so? Whatever the case, the time is fast approaching when these sensors for babies will be as common as baby rattles.
I do appreciate and understand the necessity of closely monitoring infants, being a parent myself. And I further agree that it’s critically important that parents are alerted whenever vital stats fall out of the normal range. However, I wonder what increasing reliance on sensors could mean in the long run. Could sensors eventually numb those sharp instincts that mothers and fathers have when it comes to their babies? Or could sensors somehow help to sharpen that bond? I’m not sure. Time will tell if the right balance will be achieved between tech and nurture.
In the short- and long-run, new parents, even with intelligent objects constantly feeding them data about their baby, are going to be very hands-on with their newborn. They will study every detail and will want to record it for their own piece of mind and to provide that data as needed to their child’s pediatrician. When we took our daughter home from the hospital, I used traxier to track the common things parents are asked to track (temperature, time and amount of feeding, time of diaper change with notes on color and consistency, sleep, etc.). With traxier, I liked being able to take pictures and post notes with each entry. And it made it easy for doctors to look at the aggregated data and provided the option to study further details as needed.
While traxier is great for parents with newborns, it’s great for anyone else looking to track anything in their lives. That’s just how people are built. The Information Age has transformed data into a real and valuable commodity. That’s why intelligent objects will continue to be a growing market and will become pervasive in all phases of our lives from birth through adulthood. Already there are countless tracking devices that are helping people to self-quantify.
For centuries, mothers have tended to their babies and our species has survived — no, thrived — with just good ol’ instincts. Are these instincts now inadequate? No, but data from intelligent devices can give parents an added level of security. Data relieves the anxiety of not knowing and informs our decisions and actions. Parents won’t ever leave the parenting completely to technology. That’s just human nature. But they will employ as much technological help as possible. That’s part of our evolving human nature, too.
