jason

Should You “Ferberize” Your Baby? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog points to Game Theorist: Data-driven parenting talking, in part, about “Trixie Tracker, that allows parents to record and revisit information on sleep, nappy changes, feeding (both breast-milk and solids), medicines and pumping. You can then go back and see how things have been going.” Trixie Tracker - Baby Tracker Software sounds like a dream form of data collection for parents who want to have minute details at their finger tips, via their PDAs. Whatever works for them.

But uploading this data to a site is scary regardless of the safety procedures. Scary because it initiates a life of invasive surveillance on children that once again removes a point of autonomy over basic bodily functions from ever forming. Being tied to the regulatory statistics of our bodies, for the purpose of regulating growth and development seems like a small price to pay to identify and fix minor developmental delays and issues… but keep thinking about it until the bigger picture comes to mind, and you wonder what we’ve done to ourselves over the century that has allowed us to see the standardization of human experience as a good thing.