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This paper analyzes how the materiality of knowledge afforded by wearables is present within the practice of self-surveillance. Wearables, such as smartwatches, allow for easy tracing and storage of one’s activity history, but they require the wearer to engage in self-surveillance. While giving away one’s data to gain access to online services is motivated by efficiency and ‘free’ accessibility, the practice of self-surveillance in wearables is blurrier. In this paper, I situate the notion of desire as central to the practices of digitalized selfsurveillance. This paper follows the following line of inquiry: two case studies of recent self-tracking trends (Quantified Self Movement, Apple Watch) and one historical, media archeology case study of diary writing from the 19th century. The digital self-surveillance is linked to the notion of agency and control exercised by self-disembodiment. Disembodiment is briefly analyzed as establishing a disembodiment view of the self through a distant view of the past and presence. Such a view, ‘from outside to inside,’ is linked to the selfknowledge inherent in self-tracking across time. The body becomes a data object, at once a stable entity and an object-in-making. Yet there is a threat in perceiving data as an objective mirror of reality (and thus self) rather than a set of opaque algorithm-driven (‘cooked’) digital objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]