The Measured Life in the Digital Age Optimisation by Numbers

Part I. Introduction

1. The Measured Life: Productive and Counterproductive Consequences of Quantification in Digitally Optimising Societies

Vera King, Benigna Gerisch and Hartmut Rosa 

Part II. Social Relations in the Context of Digital Media

2. Attention: Shared, Divided, Undivided: Cultural Change and Psychic Development in the Digital Age

Vera King

3. Modes of Resonance in the Age of Digitalisation

Hartmut Rosa

4. Relationship Formation in the Context of Digital Change: Two Case Studies on Social Media and Self-Tracking

Maike Stenger, Ramona Franz, Benedikt Salfeld, Micha Schlichting, Benigna Gerisch and Vera King

5. “There Is Definitely Something Potentially Addictive About It”: Self-Measurement as the New Digital Normal

Micha Schlichting, Maike Stenger, Vera King, Benigna Gerisch, Benedikt Salfeld and Julia Schreiber  

Part III. Dynamics of Parametric Optimisation: Digitalised Life-Conduct, Work and Organisation

6. Parametric Optimisation 

Hartmut Rosa

7. Digital and Parametric Optimisation in the World of Work: An Overview of Research

Franziska Elfers and Mardeni Simoni

8. The Significance of Numbers in Digital Living and Working Environments: Ambivalent Meanings of Measurement and Comparison

Vera King, Benigna Gerisch, Julia Schreiber, Diana Lindner, Pia Lodtka, Micha Schlichting and Maike Stenger  

9. Social Problems Work in Local Governments: Quantification Practice in Demand and Resource Planning

Diana Lindner

Part IV. Digitally Measured Bodies (in the Context of Psychopathologies)  

10. Self-Measurement as a Form of Optimisation and a Defensive Corset: Case Study of an Avid Self-Tracker

Benigna Gerisch and Vera King

11. Quantifying Self-Quantification: A Statistical Study on Individual Characteristics and Motivations for Digital Self-Tracking in Young and Middle-Aged Adults in Germany

Charlotte Findeis, Benedikt Salfeld, Stella Voigt, Benigna Gerisch, Vera King, Anna Rosa Ostern and Hartmut Rosa

12. Between Vulnerable Receptivity and Avoidant Distancing: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of the Psychic Processing of Self-Tracking in Women with Bulimia

Ramona Franz, Benigna Gerisch, Vera King and Benedikt Salfeld

13. Mirroring Recognition and Narcissistic Withdrawal: Psychodynamics of Self-Tracking in Burnout and Depression

Benedikt Salfeld, Ramona Franz, Benigna Gerisch and Vera King

Part V. Conclusion

14. The Measured Life: New "Normalities" and "Pathologies" in Digital Society

Vera King, Benigna Gerisch and Hartmut Rosa

Biography

Vera King is Professor of Sociology and Psychoanalytic Social Psychology at the Goethe University and Managing Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute (SFI), Frankfurt/M., Germany.

Benigna Gerisch is Professor of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU), Berlin, Germany. She is a psychoanalyst and member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA).

Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology at the Schiller-University of Jena and Director of the Max-Weber-Center, Erfurt, Germany. He is the author of Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity.