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A Real-Life Tricorder Is Now Available For You To Buy And Scan Yourself
Get excited, Star Trek fans and self-tracking enthusiasts: your real-life tricorder is now available for pre-order.Scanadu, a startup based at the NASA Ames Research Center, has been working on a non-invasive tricorder for over two years. By the end of 2012, the company had a prototype ready—a handheld Yves Behar-designed device that tracks pulse transit time (to measure blood pressure), temperature, ECG, oximetry, heart rate, and breathing rate. A 10 second scan of a person’s temple yields data that has a 99% accuracy rate.
I think that is a terrific device, and I want one. I think that if people were to use this device on a regular basis, they would gain insight into their health and probably make some good changes.
However, for that to happen, companies like these need to educate consumers about the things they’re reading, and how they relate to the different bodily systems/hormones etc. Data without understanding is usually more dangerous than no data at all - since it leads to improper interventions that can harm more than help.
So overall, cool project with potentially good ramifications for the world.
Here’s what I’m concerned about:
I worry that devices like these will just be a perfect “in” for drug companies to prescribe more and more medications to consumers. If you get consumers thinking about their “health” and whether or not it’s good on a daily basis, chances are that they’ll start to notice more and more things that were always there, but not necessarily problems. I am almost 100% sure that Scanadu will work closely with drug companies (well, they’re working with doctors, of course, so more prescriptions will likely be the result anyways).
So, while this may be a great first attempt at getting consumers involved in their health-care, it may just create more hypochondria and become the perfect in-home advocate for Merck etc.
I also worry that these devices will make the power dynamic between doctor and patient even more substantial. If patents are confronted with data they don’t know how to properly interpret, because of lack of substantial biological/physiological education, they’ll just come to think about and rely upon their doctors even more. That’s the last thing we need. We need patients to learn about these things, and take charge of their health. Is there a better way of doing that than Scanadu? I’m not sure. It’s more likely that patients will get interested in it via their own data. However… that’s unproven. -
Each of us has a set of beliefs we deem untouchable. When someone disagrees with one of these ideas, we disregard everything else they have to say - whether or not their other points are valid or clever.
It’s as if these untouchable beliefs are used for signalling purposes - I am part of “___” tribe. If violated, we know that we are talking with someone from a different group with fundamentally different assumptions about the world. This either means that communication with them is not possible, since we don’t have the same worldview and symbol system. Or, it means that we do not respect them, since they are not part of the “tribe”. -
Extremely serious mistakes about the nature of the solar system didn’t matter too much until interplanetary travel became a possibility. Extremely serious mistakes about brain “transmitters” and “receptors” didn’t matter too much until the drug industry got involved.
Ray Peat -
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“I think that everyone should be sensitive to certain questions.
For example, when confronted with a new technology, whether it’s a cellular phone, or a high definition television, or cyberspace (internet)… one question should be, ‘What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?’ And a second question would be, ‘Whose problem is it actually?’ And the third question would be, ‘If there is a legitimate problem here that is solved by the technology, what other problems will be created by my using this technology?’ “
- Neil Postman -
New technology is a kind of Faustian bargain. It always gives us something, but it always takes away something important. That’s true of the alphabet, and the printing press, and telegraph, right up through the computer.
Neil Postman. -
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken -
In this culture, what we desperately need is a recognition of the complexity of life, and of the political-ecological situation we find ourselves in. Any thinking which isn’t “system thinking” should be treated with caution, and most contemporary thinking about health neglects to consider relevant parts of the problem-system. “Official” recommendations about salt, cholesterol, iron, unsaturated and saturated fats, and soybeans have generally been inappropriate, unscientific, and strongly motivated by business interests rather than by biological knowledge.
Ray Peat -
Are Smart Gadgets Making Us Dumb?
I love the way this guy thinks about technology. An important, critical voice for all of us in the web/tech world.
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