Metrics powering life: past, present and future
David Beer analyzes metric power and its effects on our lives, past, present and future along the lines of three main themes, namely measurement, circulation and possibility.
We are always “on the measure”, weighting and assessing quantitatively. “Value for” is a concept that we all use in every aspect of our lives.
Whether a layman, an intellect or a business guru, we approach every situation we face in life based on metrics. We constantly calculate the metric value and will not accept anything except if it is calculable and unless and until we put a value on it. Lack of information limits our ability to interact with one another, whether at the social, cultural or business levels.
Although we make our decisions based on limited or imperfect information, nonetheless, we need information to make decisions, and we apply metrics to determine whether such information fits standards, norms and parameters which we have set for acceptance or rejection. In the age of “Big Data”, where we require to analyze extremely large data using computers to reveal patterns, trends and associations, whether related to economic performance or human behavior, the power of metrics gains greater importance. Describing calculation, Bill Gates says “Every year, better methods are being devised to quantify information and distill it into quadrillions of atomistic packets of data”.
Taking into consideration the fact that information is imperfect, we have to rely on David Beer’s third key theme “Possibility’, using metrics to determine how to maintain, strengthen and justify inequality and define value or worth in order to make selections. For example, We use the concept of “value for money” to calculate whether we will get enough benefit or utility to justify what we pay. We use “value for time”, to measure whether the time we spend with another person will yield sufficient benefit to justify the time we spend. Thus we can authenticate and justify.
Metric power allows some things to be seen and others to remain hidden, and as a result some things become important and others become marginal, some things are highlighted and others are concealed. We order, sort and categorize in order to make judgments and set desired aims and outcomes.
Examples on using metric power abound. A good example are the “facts of life” that we have to contend with whenever we use the Internet, be it social media websites, Amazon or any website that we visit. A profile is created in the databases of those sites to determine what we have used and analyze our preferences. If for example one visits Amazon and searches for a given product, whether that product is purchased or not, the next time you visit Facebook, you will find an advertisement by Amazon on your Facebook page. This is the extent of profiling that is being done using different metrics in order to constantly measure and in a way invisibly manipulate our consumer behavior and drive us to do or not do one thing or the other.
