Title in reference to Fritz Leiber's 1962 novella "The Creature from Cleveland Depths".1
The complex of product options that go by "activity tracker", "health monitor", or "wellness monitor" (and smart watches that include that suite of functionality) aren't exactly the "tickler"s in the story, but they share a lot of DNA with them. They are, after all, automated systems we wear explicitly so they can nudge us toward better versions of ourselves. You can get other parts of the tickler package as apps. Either for your phone or, if you choose the right smart watch for the wrist mounted device itself.2
One of the psychologically interesting things is that the prime statistics these things recorded when they first took off was ... steps. They were glorified, electronic pedomenters.3 Pedometers have been around for ages and never made such a big splash before. I suppose gamification is the key to that. Anyway, today's rantlet is about the way a wrist mounted pedometer fails us: you don't get credit for pushing a shopping cart. I can trek up and down every aisle of the local, big-box, warehouse club and the fool machine registers a few hundred steps because pushing the fool cart more or less immobilizes my wrist. I only get credit for putting things in the cart. The old waist-mounted mechanical jobs managed that kind of use better.
Okay, so it's seriously a first-world problem. You're right. And it's of no actual consequence. You're right about that, too. It still annoys me.
1 Available from Project Gutenberg or in audio form from Librivox.
2 I wear a Withing ScanWatch so I can't get a bunch of apps on my wrist, but I do get reasonably comprehensive health tracking, weeks of battery life (I only every charge it while I shower), and the aesthetic appeals to me.
3 Indeed, the cheapest ones still are, but many do a lot more these days.
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