What Computers Cannot Do (for Health and Fitness)
Happy Friday! What's good? Here are some of the latest stories about the intersection of health and fitness and technology (and money). Speaking of money, I'm, like, 20 years late to the game, but I just started reading Michael Lewis's Moneyball, in part because I'm fascinated by how wrong these popular stories – his popular stories – can be. I'll have more to say about Moneyball and big data (and yeah, probably education as well as fitness) technologies soon. But for now...
The business of "health" technology: "Zepp Health Partners with Wild.AI to Offer Women’s Wellness App" – its product "Amazfit will now use hormone and cycle tracking to help women unlock their potential," according to the press release. (There's no real evidence that "hormone balancing" and "cycle syncing" actually improve one's fitness, but technology loves tracking, so there you go.) Wired reviews the new Samsung fitness tracker, the Galaxy Ring. Levels, a company that says it uses AI for "meal monitoring" has raised $10 million in funding. Vox on "The case of the nearly 7,000 missing pancreases." I'm not sure it should come as a surprise to anyone, but it looks like there's something shady going on with the organ donation industry. The Wall Street Journal writes about the people getting new knees and hips in their 40s. The number of people under 65 getting joint replacement surgery has grown by 200% in the last 20 years.
Other stories we tell (and are told) about health sciences/technologies: "The New York Times on AI and deep brain stimulation: "A Personalized Brain Pacemaker for Parkinson’s." "More People Are Overdosing on Ozempic Alternatives," says The New York Times, which has spent the last year or so pushing Ozempic and is now ready to chastise people who cannot find or afford it.
It’s a numbers game, I guess: According to Runner’s World, you can pay money to Strava “surrogates” who will log into your account and run your miles for you — so that you get badges and achievements and other online kudos. The trend is mostly isolated to Indonesia, the magazine claims — that’s where both the runners and the folks paying-for-runners reside — but I imagine this is disconcerting news for the folks at NYRR, who partner with Strava and encourage folks to run 26.2 miles virtually to earn a spot in the actual NYC Marathon next year.
The "science" of sports technology: From The Journal of Applied Physiology (earlier this year): "Technological advances in elite sport: Where does one draw the line?" Pacing lights. Advanced footwear technology. Heart-rate monitors. When does a technology become an "unfair advantage?" Also wringing their hands about "unfair advantages," The Washington Post published a terrible op-ed, arguing that "elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender," as if sex is actually as simple a category as junior high science textbook would have had us believe. Some bonus content from Rose Eveleth as part of her Tested podcast series that looks at the "gender verification" process at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Wall Street Journal asks Daniel Yang, an executive at Kaiser Permanente "what AI can do in healthcare and what it should never do." (Book recommendation: Hubert Dreyfus's classic from 1972, What Computers Can't Do. And a reminder to learn some history of computer science and AI before making sweeping pronouncements about the future of computer science and AI.) "A New Study Used Machine Learning to Predict Athletic Recovery" is the headline in Outside. But surprise surprise, machine learning doesn't. (I'm going to write more about this in the coming weeks — I think it’s connected to the Moneyball stuff — as I've started wearing my Garmin watch again to track the pace and distance when I run; but I remain fairly unconvinced that it's that helpful to wear a fitness tracker all the time and/or to record every activity.)
The big business of sports technology: "Stadiums Are Embracing Face Recognition. Privacy Advocates Say They Should Stick to Sports." Wired reports. Also via Wired: "The English Premier League Will Ditch Its Hated VAR Offside Tech for a Fleet of iPhones."
Steaming piles of streaming technology: "Chick-Fil-A Hatches Plans For Streaming Service," Deadline reports. I’m sure the content will be swell. Elsewhere in streaming — and why haven't I written about this case previously?! – Disney has ended its attempt to get a wrongful death lawsuit dropped because the plaintiff had signed up for Disney+, and the fine print there had included something about waiving any rights to sue. These two stories fit somewhere somewhere somewhere in the overlap among health, wellness, business-bullshit and television-technology. And I guess if you're sick of streaming Peloton instructor-content (or in the case of Peloton instructors, sick of making it), you'll soon be able to read your Kindle while working out on your Peloton equipment.
Convivial fitness technologies, maybe: "India's schoolgirls are leading a silent cycling revolution," says the BBC. In other cycling revolutions (as newsletter impresario Rusty Foster says), you can always quit.
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