Gary Wolf is one of the great catalogers—part writer, part scene-maker. He’s best known for leading the Quantified Self, a concept that originated in a WIRED article and evolved into a meetup series and cultural movement. He has thought deeply and honestly about what technology can teach us about ourselves, and he’s wrangled a large community of amateurs who are doing the same, learning their lessons along with his own.
The Quantified Self rode the wave of trendiness, growing alongside a booming wearables industry (watches, step-counters, sleep-evaluators), but it never sold out. For some reason, Gary kept the community focused on a deeper truth, which he has written about in an upcoming book about personal science.
Key ideas:
Keep the discussion focused on people and ideas. As the meetups multiplied, the Quantified Self quickly encountered a problem: the startup pitches started to dominate, so they instituted a protocol for talk-givers. They had to answer three questions:
1. What did I do?
2. How did I do it?
3. What did I learn?
This first-person requirement kept the conversation lively and helped QS “articulate an ethic.”
Mind the experience gap. In any technical scene, experienced veterans race ahead while newcomers repeat the same beginner questions—an adaptation of the eternal September problem. If you don’t bridge that gap, the community stalls. Wolf suggests this might be the natural life cycle of a field-building effort.
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