Quantifiability is the necessary precondition for turning anything into money.
Evidence
We occupy a peculiar historical moment in which what counts as real is, according to the dominant ways of thinking, mostly limited to that which can be counted. Quantified. Expressed as numbers. And it is no coincidence that this ability to express a thing in terms of numerical value is the necessary first step toward turning that thing into money. This is troubling. It is a logic which holds that everything which exists can be turned into money and sold. Indeed, it is a view of the world which holds that everything is in effect already money—even if some part of it is waiting to be monetized. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 249
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the ‘everything is a standing reserve’ theme familiar from Heidegger and to the reader’s own critique of datafication. Resonates with Four Quartets-style ‘reductive wonder’ not literally, but with the general anti-quantification tradition.
Related
- Quantifiability is the necessary precondition for monetization (similarity 0.93)
- Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource (similarity 0.82)
- Quantification allocates the power to measure to some actors over others. (similarity 0.80)
- Money erases qualitative distinctions by reducing everything to quantity (similarity 0.79)
- Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold. (similarity 0.79)