Our lives are increasingly defined by numbers. From fitness trackers to social media likes, we're constantly quantifying our existence. But what drives this obsession? And what does it mean for our understanding of self? Let's delve into the world of self-quantification.
The power of measurement in contemporary life
Standard Reference Peanut Butter
- Created by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and sold to industry at a price of $1,069 for three 170g jars
- This peanut butter has been frozen, heated, evaporated, and saponified, all so it might be quantified and measured across multiple dimensions
- When buyers purchase a jar, they can be certain not only of the exact proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, sugars and fibre in every spoonful, but of the prevalence – down to the milligram – of dozens of different organic molecules and trace elements, from copper and magnesium to docosanoic and tetradecanoic acid
- Hardly an atom in these jars has avoided scrutiny and, as a result, they contain the most categorically known peanut butter in existence
- The peanut butter belongs to a library of more than 1,300 standard reference materials, or SRMs, created by NIST to meet the demands of industry and government
- Whenever something needs to be verified, certified, or calibrated – from the emission levels of a new diesel engine to the optical properties of glass destined for high-powered lasers – the SRM catalogue offers the standards against which checks can be made
- Purpose of all these materials is to offer clients “truth in a bottle”
- To ensure that customers can have total trust in the agency’s measurements
The samples themselves are perfectly edible.
In 2003, food critic William Grimes had the chance to taste NIST’s peanut butter. He noted that it didn’t offer the creamy flavours of most consumer brands, looked more like industrial paste than food, and was, all told, entirely average.
The discipline of measurement developed for millennia before it could scrape out the bottom of a jar of peanut butter
Around 6,000 years ago, the first standardized units were deployed in river valley civilisations such as ancient Egypt, where the cubit was defined by the length of the human arm, from elbow to the tip of the middle finger
- In the Middle Ages, the task of regulating measurement to facilitate trade was both privilege and burden for rulers
- The metric system was created to simplify metrology and embody political ideals
- Today, international standards like those mandated by NIST and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) are mostly invisible in our lives
- Where measurement does intrude is via bureaucracies of various stripes, particularly in education and the workplace
- “Metric fixation” is a ubiquitous concept that pervades not only the private sector but also the less-quantifiable activities of the state, such as healthcare and policing
- We live in the age of measured accountability, of reward for measured performance, and belief in the virtues of publicizing those metrics through ‘transparency”
- Excessive measurement and inappropriate measurement will distort, distract, and destroy what we claim to value
