There's no shortage of tech podcasts, but few give you a true dose of the future.

The A16Z podcast is an exception.

It takes you straight to the innovators behind new materials, data centers, self-driving cars, even electric boats,

eavesdrop on the future with the A16Z podcast. Hello and welcome to the Exponential View podcast. My name is Asima Zah and I'm the

host and creator of the podcast and the newsletter of the same name. The podcast and that

newsletter exponential view are my ways of explaining how

the world is changing under the force of technology. Today I'm in conversation with Professor

Gina Neff. She's a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute

and at the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford.

And she studies the digital transformation of industries,

personal tracking, and the sociology of technology and innovation.

Now before we get on to the conversation, I should note that we did have to do this podcast recording

over a phone line and there is some background noise but the conversation itself is interesting enough for you to bear with it.

So I start by asking Gina to give us a view on where we are in the current state of personal

tracking devices. One of the things that we really wanted to do with the book was

create a set of conversations around what is influencing how people think about data

about their lives and then what are the cultural what's the cultural impact

of that. One of the key differences for us was you know the sets of communities

that people want to understand and make sense of their data with haven't really changed.

The idea that people have cultural awareness around certain kinds of activities and not others.

That is a constant, right?

That hasn't changed.

...