eWEAR Seminar: The Quantified Self for Health

Quantified self is a cultural trend of self-tracking that incorporates technology and data acquisition into daily life, often with the goal of improving physical and mental health or to improve performance. The widespread use of wearables that track fitness, health, and sleep have enabled more individuals who seek "self-knowledge through numbers” to engage in quantified self techniques for disease management and wellness.

Epistemic Agency — Empowering Individual Health Discovery with AI

Speaker: Gary Wolf, Founder of The Quantified Self and Director of Article 27 Foundation

Abstract: Epistemic agency is the right and capacity of an individual to act as a producer of knowledge, rather than only a source of data — to pose questions, gather and interpret evidence, reach conclusions, and be recognized by others as a credible knower. Epistemic agency is not something that can simply be granted. It is realized through epistemic activities, such as training, research, communication of discoveries, and response to feedback and criticism. Since its founding in 2008, the Quantified Self community has supported participants' epistemic agency through developing tools, methods, and systems for sharing knowledge. This seminar will review some of the lessons learned, with an emphasis on how AIs may both advance and limit participation in knowledge-making.

Bio: Gary Wolf is the author of The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe. (Workman Publishing, 2026) A former executive editor of Wired Digital and contributing editor at Wired magazine, he cofounded the Quantified Self movement in 2008. He currently works with the Personal Science Research Group to build tools, develop methods, and publish case studies that support small scale empirical science. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Pre-order Gary Wolf's book, "The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe" online