Meet Chris Dancy, the World’s Most Connected Human

Creatives flocked to the South of France in their thousands last week for the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, but there was one visitor in particular who carried a lot more baggage onto the aeroplane than most.

Chris Dancy, an IT professional, made a decision five years ago to lead a data-driven lifestyle. He now covers his body in hundreds of sensors every day to monitor information about himself and the world around him. He is now best known by the title World’s Most Connected Human.

The 46-year-old American wears up to 700 sensors at any one time and claims that they enable him to better manage his lifestyle and environment. As a result of this extreme ‘life hacking’ research he can tell you what the weather was like on any day in the past five years, he can also tell you what he had to eat that day, how long he slept and even how many steps he took.

Dancy was hosted by Wunderman ad agency during his visit to Cannes and took to the stage for a session titled How Much More Personal Can We Be? attended by a select group of 15 CMOs.

He also took the time to meet shots for a one-to-one chat about his work. Below, Dancy explains how his amazing journey began, how it has impacted on his life and his plans for the future.

How and why did you start this research?

First of all, thank you for calling it research. Some people call it a project or a stunt, but I’ve always called it research. I started when I turned 40 and I started looking at the systems I was using on the internet and thinking: ‘What happens if they go away?’ Myspace had basically gone and I lost a lot of content. Facebook had become really big and people were starting to use their mobile phones for almost everything. I thought: ‘I need to save my own stuff’.

Really it started off as a simple research project – could I save what I created? Within six months I was saving not just social but entertainment and stuff I did at work. It got bigger and bigger but it was important for me that I was able to collect data with what I call ‘low friction collection routines’. I had to live my life with stuff just being saved automatically. I designed systems that meant further systems would be easy to bring on. I also defined 10 areas in my life – financial, health, environment, social, work etc… and whenever I touched an application, a system or a sensor it would drop into one of those buckets.

In the last year I’ve been able to take this massive amount of data I’ve collected, anywhere from 40 to 60 terabytes, and start to automate parts of my life. I lost 120 pounds by saying: “What’s the difference between a 3,000 calorie day and a 2,500 calorie day?” I looked at days where I’d eaten 500 calories less and noticed I’d behaved differently on those days. I then created a routine for myself that copied that behaviour. I lost 60 pounds just from having that information. I weighed 320 pounds when I started and was too big to even exercise.

How easy is it to live a normal life when you’re tracking everything?

It’s pretty easy for me because you don’t really see me doing anything. Like, as I’m talking to you now, a photo is being taken every few seconds, the temperature is being calculated constantly and much more is going on. The hard work is having it all happen in the background and then making it useful.

I created all the routines that gather the information, I created the platform to display it and I created the concepts that drive it. I call it the ‘inner net’. I don’t think that the internet, the way it works today, works very well. It does a good job at holding your attention, but it does a really bad job of making you feel special. There’s nothing really on your phone that makes you feel good about yourself. I want to create systems that showed a really positive reflection of me and I’ve found I can live a better life through using them.

How long do you plan to live like this? Will you always collect data on yourself?

I will always collect the data; I think it’s absolutely critical that we understand what’s being collected on us. As far as analysing the data and the heavy lifting I did to get to this point, I occasionally might do something – like if there’s a day where I don’t feel too good, I’ll try to go back and figure out what happened.

I love bringing new systems on (I’m getting an upgraded sensor for my vehicle that keeps track of when you speed up or slow down and what music is playing when you do so). However, I think everyone will always live how I am now; it’s just a question of how aware they are of it and whether they’re getting any use out of it. I took a year off of work to help people understand that information belongs to you and you should be able to access it.

You’ve taken time out from your IT job to embark upon this research. Can you see yourself returning?

I was really fortunate that at that point five years ago I’d done really well in my job as director at the office of CTO and was getting to travel and do things that most people can’t in a ‘normal job’. I think at this point it would be really hard to go back to a job that functioned like everyone else. One reason is because it’s hard for me to watch other people working and not want to optimise and fix them.

I’ve always been hard core into IT though and I started out on a help desk in my 20s. I think it’s what allowed me to look at what I was doing and make sense of it, because in IT you do a lot with databases and I just thought of life as a big database.

Do you feel this research has had a positive impact on your life?

Physically it’s had a really positive impact and financially it’s had a positive impact. I’m getting to do things I never would have done before. I think the most profound affect it’s had on me is my ability to pay attention to people and their needs, because I’m really aware of my own body and my surroundings. I didn’t have that five years ago. I just didn’t care. I’m very empathetic in all sorts of ways that I never thought were possible. I care now.

Do you plan to compile your findings or write a book about your work?

I’ve actually been asked to write a book by a couple of people. Some people want a book on how to get started, some people want a book on my findings, some people just want a book on my health and how I changed myself (as well as being overweight I was a heavy smoker and a pretty good drinker). I’ve had a couple of TV offers as well to do some pretty weird stuff. Right now, I’ve got so much going on until the end of the year and the one thing I know from all this data is that I need to take care of me and I need to rest.