Life-stowing from a Digital Media Perspective : Past, Present and Future

Alberto Frigo is regarded as an early proponent of life-logging. He is known for having photographed every object his right hand has used since the 24th September 2003. Continuously documenting 18 aspects of his life, Frigo intends to create a Rosetta Stone of time to be concluded at 60 years of age, in 2040, after 36 years. The most extreme example of self-tracking, Frigo is the only known person to have digitally documented his life manually and for over thirteen years.This is his Doctoral Dissertation.

Through extensive etymological research, this book defines life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. Also as part of this book, an historical overview introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of lifestowing, particularly in relation to digital media, this book discloses the author’s ongoing life-stowing project.

While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, this book theoretically frames life-stowing.