Metric Power
There are many factors that have the power to affect on the community. But they differ in the everlasting of its power. When you think about these factors, there is a one that begins in the past and will stay and becomes bigger which is metric power. Metric power is the power of limits and boundaries, the numbers and values, the dividing and categorizing, as well as the grouping and individualizing.” Metric power works by ordering, sorting, categorizing, and translating them to social information” (beer-metric power page 174) .Metric power is the power that can highlight or obfuscate and drawing judgments from the categorizing and sorting and translating them to norms that reinforces its logic.” This self-reinforcement occurs because it is those same metrics that are able to define and shape what is valued” (beer-metric power p:177). It is the powers of numbers that nowadays not only affect in every single detail in our life, but also have the power to organize our future and present. It begins in numbering items such as in a market to reach now the level of making people an items and numbers in the life and can be categorized in their groups drawing from them a conclusion that helps the people understand the life easier. It makes us like in a market each group must be categorized according to its characteristics, shape, types, actions and feelings. You are in the view of the metric power a 1, small digit that must work and be producing to maintain his life. Every day this power attracts more audience to its authority, by affecting their privacy, life, and actions. Also this power makes the scientists or governments to draw conclusions and stereotype the studied groups, selecting their future, names, and actions, and the final conclusion is critical, determining success or failure. For example, drawing a conclusion from observing the numbers that enter schools makes a decision that white people are more educated than the black. Here, this power gives a general conclusion that will include every black individual that is a non educated person, as well as affecting black’s position in the community. Race is one of the most examples that illustrate this issue since it is the classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, ancestry, or genetics. “The concept of racial types took firm hold in the nineteenth century across a range of social and natural sciences” (The Case of Race Classification and Reclassification under Apartheid p: 206). From the past centuries and this classification is found and still exists but why this power continues till now? By the passage of days, the power of numbers got more and more in the private life of the individual. To exemplify, the health problems and the whole life of a person are directly linked to the numbers appear in the screen of the machines like the diabetic machine. So this power point a finger on the race issue that shows the difference between people and it becomes a big conflict that affect the community. Also according to the racism, many studies were made to show the disadvantages that black people have by concluding that more crimes are done by black people, so they are criminals. Other than this example, the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are stereotyped and being affected by this power. First, according to the international NGOs and governments they are numbers of people that needs help not victims of a war and must be helped and complete their life. Syrian refugees in Lebanon as an example are numbers that must be grouped in a small area and not allowed to continue their life freely. As well as they are affected by this power when they are categorized as the causes of problems and face of terrorists. To be more general it is the same categorizing of Muslims in the Europe countries as terrorists. To add, measurements are also a face of this power since it have a big role in sorting groups and manages individual’s life, since in some times the life of this individual is directed by numbers and another example of this the sensors of the diabetes and blood pressure that when the value of this two diseases exceeds the normal average the sensor will directly call the red cross and the family of the patient to solve this problem.
To end, metric power reaches the level of affecting the life of the individual as well as the progress of the community. Numbers may solve many problems and in the same time it affect negatively many conditions. It brings your future to the present and manages all the life, the time, the days, and conclusions. Metric power will not stop but it is in progress, and numbers will manage the world to the end.
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