by tb8424 on 12/3/21, 10:46 PM with 62 comments
by MarkusWandel on 12/6/21, 10:31 AM
I'm fairly far along on the data hoarding spectrum. This extends, for example, to over 200K photos from my life, categorized and indexed. It's trivial to look at "what happened on this day 20 years ago" or at least on the nearest date to that day that had pictures taken.
And here's the thing: As the memories fade, so does interest in the photos. 10 years ago you still remember clearly. 20 years ago is another era.
And that's photos. Fitness data? Do I really want to see how I declined over the last 20 years? I see that already from the average speed display on my bike computer. Fitness data is the ultimate "looking forward" thing. But maybe that's my age; it may look different from a younger perspective.
Agree with others that just use a platform that lets you export open-ish files. .gpx doesn't do heart rate, but .fit does, and gpsbabel can translate that to another format as needed.
by toastal on 12/6/21, 6:09 AM
by killjoywashere on 12/6/21, 5:50 AM
Sounds like someone is trying to wrap this up, godspeed: https://spectrum.ieee.org/wearable-health-data-standards
Also, IMHO, I think healthcare is where protobuf could really win over JSON: a protobuf comes with the schema and any datatype can ride the message. Everything you need is there.
Is protobuf a heavier lift to get started? Yeah. So? Healthcare is too heavily regulated (and for good reasons) for this to be a significant issue. The barrier to entry is so much higher than the effort to handle protobuf, that it's lost in the wash.
by acwan93 on 12/6/21, 5:55 AM
Without some overarching body, like a government regulator, I'm not optimistic there will be widespread adoption of interoperability.
by phillipppp on 12/6/21, 5:24 AM
by tnhh on 12/6/21, 7:08 AM
Of course this will only work in some jurisdictions, and even then it needs stronger enforcement to ensure that data controllers will comply (or even understand their obligations).
by Syonyk on 12/6/21, 5:55 AM
I can only hope it's a future in which we collectively realized that smartphones, smartwatches, smartglasses, smartypantstoilets, smartgloves, smartdiapers, etc, were a bloody well idiotic idea and that we've come to our collective senses and realized that they were never what they promised to be, but had, within a few years of launch, turned into just more ways of monopolizing attention for a quick venture capital and IPO payout. Perhaps not the hardware manufacturers, but at least the way the hardware was used.
More realistically, those are likely to be dim memories of the past, back before capitalism ran the planet into the ground, and took most of our technology stacks with it. Modern tech stacks are complexity, piled on complexity, built on a few stacks of complexity, built on broken hardware that's overly complex in an attempt to gain the performance required to run the teetering stacks on top of it (all the uarch vulns, DDR4 Rowhammer is a nice touch on top, etc).
You'll note that neither of those paths involve us running around with the FitBit 2050 gathering... whatever it is it thinks it ought to gather. The way things are going, probably nothing more useful than Covid tracking stuff. "You were in proximity with 1.7 potential individuals who may have been infected with Covid, please quarantine for the next two weeks. confetti"
It would be nice if we had some of our current technology, that open data standards had taken root and we could decide how we wanted to use the stuff, pay appropriately and be paid appropriately for our devices, attention, etc. But that's just not the way things are going, and I fear that's not the way things are going to go, under any reasonable future. There is far, far too much money and "Well, but, see, if you destroy the market you can monopolize it!" money floating around for the near to moderate future to see that future happen. I mean, a bunch of our current companies are literally based on "We will use the venture capital money to undercut everyone else, drive them out of business, and then be the monopoly!" Uber, Lyft, [insert the food delivery service of the week here], the various scooter services, and the list goes on. They're running into the brick wall of, "Wait... what do you mean, we're not going to accomplish that? You mean we have to turn a profit?" I've talked to people who have started taking taxis again, because at least they'll show up, unlike the Sharing Economy Rideshare App of The Future services that weren't remotely pandemic-proof.
We'll see. But I would predict that fitness trackers, in 20 years, are a big pile of ewaste, "... ugh, yeah, you know, it's not worth the hassle to get that data out...," and broken promises. And hopefully not being actively worn by then.