Fitbit One Takes a Licking and Keeps On . . . Blooming

Six weeks ago my husband lost his Fitbit One.  He replaced it with another. This past weekend he found his original One near the wood pile in Vermont.  When he lost it, in March,  there was still lots of snow on the ground. Then the Fitbit endured Vermont's mud season, a time of alternating thawing and puddling and re-icing and re-thawing. Snow, sleet, rain,  and even a bit of sunshine.  And guess what? He brought it inside and before thirty minutes had passed, the flower started to bloom.

Of course, to make the flower bloom like the one pictured above, he had to walk. A lot.  Which we did. We hiked six miles roundtrip to Hamilton Falls in Jamaica State Park on Sunday.  The first two miles are on the 19th-century West River Railroad trail, with a gentle uphill grade.  Then there's a moderate,  consistent climb up to the Falls,  the tallest falls in Vermont, for a total of 55 Fitbit floors. 

Here's a clip of the action on Hamilton Falls:

The Fitbit flower is the product of a fairly new field of study called captology--computers as persuasive technologies.  Get it?  The Fitbit flower entices us to move, to change our habits.  One of the most successful applications for captology gets us off our computers, off our couches, and into the world. The Fitbit blooms and so do we.  Captology can be studied at Stanford University.  Here's a link to their program http://captology.stan ford.edu/ , where  psychology meets digital technology.  Move over, Don Draper, there are new kids in town. . .