Planet of the apps

A new glut of apps, gadgets and sensors log and monitor every moment of our lives. Pavel Barter signs up to the cult of life-logging.

THE alarm starts bleating wearingly at 7:30am. It sounds like a bunch of canaries let loose in a nightclub, so I swipe my smartphone and check my ‘sleep time’ app. I was awake until 1:10am, slept lightly for half an hour, before deep REM sleep until 3am, at which point the graph flatlines. I pinch myself. Still alive. Either the phone’s accelerometer stopped working or I had an out-of-body experience. Either way, I didn’t get my recommended eight hours of kip.

In the kitchen, I shovel a bowl of Weetabix with blueberries down my gullet, swig a coffee, then plug the details into ‘carbs and cals’. I floss, and tell the world about this momentous event on the ‘lift’ app.