I help people make empirical discoveries in everyday life.

I mix journalistic, technical, and academic methods. My aim is to feed a cycle of work that goes like this: Documentation of self research generates discussion among a community of peers, leading to new abstractions and tools that support the next round of self research discoveries. After 13 years this process still feels fragile and evanescent, and yet it keeps going, a small miracle of joyful empirical reasoning in a damaged scientific ecosystem.

In 2007 I co-founded the Quantified Self, a users group of self-trackers and toolmakers. Previously I was a contributing editor at Wired magazine, the founding Executive Editor of Wired Online and Wired News, and a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

My independence as a researcher is partly supported by my Patreon community. If you find these resources useful, you can join to get early access to emerging research and advance news of upcoming events and opportunities.

Right now I’m writing a book called Personal Science: Learning to Observe. My book has five co-authors! They are my long time colleagues and collaborators Steven Jonas, Martijn de Groot, Sara Riggare, Thomas Blomseth Christiansen, and Jakob Eg Larsen.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’m gary@antephase.com and @agaricus on Twitter. 

Empirical Methods, Personal Questions

The use of empirical methods for personal learning and discovery is a valuable human capacity. (w/Martijn deGroot) 

The Open Stack For Self-Tracking

Rethinking our Self-Tracking Tools: An hour long community discussion at QS18.

Quantified Self Show&Tell

Documentation of self-research projects (458 talks with transcriptions as of 9/2021).