~10 min read

Part one - feeling loopy

Why can't a nose be 12 inches?
Because then it would be a foot.

This dumb joke is also a very good joke because it reveals the sort of absurdity that underpins the human-made concept of metrics. Metrics are useful to us only if they are in fact useful to us… A foot for example, is thought to have originated in about 7,000 BC from the need to feed a population of people. Apparently, it helped us determine how much land was necessary for planting and when we began to use it, our relationship with abundance and scarcity became more predictable. This was a very handy outcome and led us to explore more of what the world of metrics could offer our species. I believe that since then, we have discovered a love for measurement born out of the utility of control and this has led us to invent a truly astounding number of ways to measure stuff. 

The element of metrics I will muse about in this first installment is comparison. If metrics didn't enable us to declare ‘this is bigger than this’ or ‘that is farther than that’ I doubt we would use them. But the thing about comparison is, you can only compare things that subscribe to the same units or place similar value onto the same kinds of artifacts. The ability to compare things has loads of benefits, like making our lives simpler. Can you imagine going to the grocery store and trying to barter for products; trading the macrame plant holders you made for some beans?! It would take hours to negotiate what should be a straightforward transaction. And I say that with all the bias I hold in my being because I'm a westerner born in 1988 and I speak English and have marketable skills that grant me an income. So for people who can access resources that give them power in their economic system, money serves as a substitute for time and relationships. I'm trying to describe a kind of looping effect here but I'm not sure if it's working. 

Let's approach from another angle, the messy business of human meaning making and interpretation. Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as saying "Comparison is the thief of joy” and if you went to school with people from a variety of backgrounds, you may have encountered the impact of this on your own psyche. Why might it be, that when you saw Sally with her new shoes, you felt sad and like your own shoes were suddenly super uncool? Maybe because property is a binary variable, you either have or do not have. Or maybe because what we are actually talking about is simply a feeling that has no more meaning to it than a passing muscle spasm. It could also be an appropriate reaction for an individual enmeshed within an incomprehensibly complex and ever changing landscape of social dynamics. Also, perhaps you are the one who actually actually deserves cool new shoes but the kind you are going to get wouldn't even be on Sally's radar so F* her because her style isn't as good as yours. What if it's all of those things and none of them? Is it working?

What I'm not trying to say is that metrics are purely self-referential. I'm trying to say they are self-referential and then some, and also that they require self-reference in order to operate as well as evolve. For example, humanity put a mirror on the moon and then shot a laser at it so that we could validate (to within 3cm) how far away we thought the moon was at any given moment. An immense amount of technology went into that process and all of that technology reinforced the metrics that forged their own existence. But, what is weird to me is that 1. that we didn't make the moon and shoot it out into space 2. that we managed to get there without being 100% precise and 3. that we used that occasion to increase our precision.  

Circling back to comparison as a concept, the ability to compare helps us map where the item under observation sits on the scale of things as well as facilitating the refinement of our tools. So comparison is one way to achieve accuracy… and accuracy gets us closer to power which sounds pretty good right? We'll dive a bit deeper into that in part two.

Part two - (dis)embodiment

When I consider just how long we used our bodies as the templates for units, my perspective on the relationships between humanity, power and measurement gets reframed. If we consider the "foot” from 7,000 B.C. to be our first example, it wasn't until the last bit of the 18th century did we even begin to entertain the idea that units should be based on things that are not the human body. But before that transition took place, let's take a peek at how far our bodies could take us.

The Egyptians built the pyramids to be as perfect as they were because they had the royal cubit; a proxy for the distance between the elbow to the fingertip. By rigorously adhering to this unit they tapped into some of the rewards that standardization can offer, namely scalability and translation. With these the teams of workers (slaves?!) were able to construct superstructures which still exist to this day as well as offer a stunning case for the argument to interlock ambition with metrics, more on this second point soon.

So big buildings which last forever is one thing, what about empires? Some King Henry's are known for having ascended to the throne and changing the “yard” to be equivalent to the distance between their nose and their outstretched thumb, or else the length of their arm. It made sense for their subjects to invoke the corporeal incarnation of their divine ruler in order to to estimate how wide their barn should be, clearly. But if the next king just came along and reset the units according to their own bodies, that's not much of a lasting legacy. So perhaps the reliance upon the body throughout the majority of the history of metrics was more of a practicality than it was an exercise of vanity. Our bodies are readily available and they are also our number one instrument for existing within the world as well as attempting to understand it. 

Let's come back to this point about the interlocking of ambition with metrics as we indecently summarize the transition of the measure of distance away from the human form and towards something UNCHANGING and UNIVERSAL. In 1665 Newton's theory of gravity separated the concepts of weight from mass bringing further evidence for a force called gravity which varies in its intensity depending on where you are in the universe. The anthropocentric understanding of science was crumbling away and humans were slowly realizing how small they were. Then, at the end of March 1791 the French Academy of Sciences defined the meter as one-ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. But the desire for universality compelled us to redefine a meter once again in 1983 as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Quite abstract no? Almost makes me miss using our feet…

While the complexity of the definition could feel a bit alienating, the new scope available to humanity as a result of this refocus is nothing short of transformational. By using light to measure distance, we could have been setting ourselves up to be able to travel alongside it. We could have also been trading in our deep intuitive knowledge of earthly matters for greater precision. The consequences of this tradeoff are still being lived, but we can all see that science's appetite for precision is insatiable. I predict that human curiosity will remain a medium for its pursuit for the foreseeable.

Part three - made to measure

I did my fair share of blah-blahing in the above, putting in a few reference links here and there so you don't think I'm making it ALL up. Most of the writing I will do here will follow this format. But essentially this is a practice of trust as well as a thinking exercise. Part of the goal of this project is to reacquaint our bodily senses with the practice of measurement and for me that means an exploration of my writing without the need to tether all my arguments to facts. Besides, the internet is rife with fact-checkers so I'm confident that I'll be informed when I've gotten something wrong - and I thank you for that!

Identifying that something is wrong is a skill our species has in common with all other biological life on Earth and there's good reasoning for it. As environments change the organisms within them may or may not continue to have their needs met. If the needs are no longer being met, things are wrong and once things are wrong, something needs to change. The process of evolution or adaptation is catalyzed by this “discomfort” and organisms who can arrange for a new comfortable dynamic with their environment will most likely survive. I guess now is a good time to make the claim that pattern recognition is the most archaic form of metrics and repeat that the ability to measure is not unique to homo sapiens. 

So metrics are earthly and how humanity engages with them reflects our own ambitions!? Sure, why not! We have to start this conversation off somewhere and that seems like an interesting enough place. Next I'll be publishing the questions that will guide my interviews with experts so stay tuned for those soon.