Of Course There's a Smart E-Cigarette to Shame You Into Quitting Smoking

Isn't the whole point of vices that we're supposed be all sneaky about them in order to stay in perpetual denial that we have these dirty habits? Not in the 21st Century world of big data and internet-enabled everything, it isn't: Now vices have gone digital, and we can track in meticulous detail exactly when, how, and why we give into our guilty pleasures. If it’s all out laid out clear as day with graphs and numbers and stuff, it’s easier to shame ourselves into kicking the habit.

It was only a matter of time until the vice-shaming trend found its way to electronic cigarettes, whose champions believe are a godsend for the smoking-cessation game. Digital smokes already run on batteries charged through the USB jack in your laptop; now a French startup has jiggered the electronic device to create the first "connected" e-cigarette. The gadget, called Smokio, syncs up with your smartphone to carefully monitor your vaping habits and analyze the health boost you’re getting from e-smoking.

It's worth noting that this premise is predicated on the dubious assumption that vapers are all ex-smokers who have totally replaced traditional cigarettes with the tobacco-free variety, and thus every electronic puff would otherwise be a throat full of smoke. But, assuming that's the case, the app gives a data-rich overview of how your decision to go digital is saving your ass.

It tells you when, where, and for how long you tend to vape, which can give insight into what triggers a nicotine craving: Late-night drinking binges? Stress at work? It tells you how many puffs of the e-cig you've taken and how many analog cigarettes that would have translated to, thus calculating how much sin-tax money you've saved. But the most striking feature is the little heart icon that's colored red over time as you e-smoke yourself back to health. The app tracks blood oxygenation, heart rejuvenation, and calculates how many days you've added back onto your life.

Morbid as it is to monitor your own life-expectancy in real time, Smokio is just the latest addition to the sea of health-tracking devices on the consumer electronics market. Earlier this year researchers in Taiwan developed a wireless sensor you embed in your teeth that tracks when you misbehave—by smoking or overeating and the like—and then rats you out to your doctor. And just today, a startup launched the HAPI fork, an electronic fork that encourages you to eat more slowly by vibrating if you shovel food into your mouth too fast. Who needs self-control when we have smart objects?

It's no surprise that connected devices, wearable tech, and tracking apps are flooding the health care industry. Our proclivity to spend money on bad habits, and then even more money regretfully trying to break them, is an endless and very lucrative cycle. Now that onslaught of data on this particular aspect of human nature is streaming into the digital universe for companies selling vices and vice antidotes to learn from.

As it happens, Big Tobacco has skin in both those games. When e-cigarettes started getting popular—it’s now a multibillion-dollar industry—some major tobacco companies made the wise move of investing in the new technology that was trying to kill their product. (Keep your friends close and all that.) If and when corporations get their hands on the consumer analytics Smok.io and its inevitable copycat apps are going to start amassing, it’ll be a treasure trove for marketers.

So yeah, health-trackers can be a nice way to illuminate our bad habits for our own benefit, but they also present a nice new opportunity for companies to profit as we struggle against our vices. Maybe that's just the going rate for overcoming all the awful shit we do to our persons.