Quantification allocates the power to measure to some actors over others.

Evidence

As Theodore Porter put it, “Quantification is a technology of distance.” Some distance is inherent to the abstraction involved in producing all quantified knowledge of the social. Such distance is more than a distance from one’s subjective opinion—practices of quantification also involve a social separation, the development of “forms of expertise and power relations” that allocate the power to quantify to some actors and not others. It is easy to forget “the social conditions in which science is possible,” as French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once noted, but that is exactly what we must not do in the era of the God view. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 385

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘God view’ and the social construction of measurement power connects to the data colonialism frame’s critique that platforms’ statistical authority is itself a power relation. — connects to: Quantification always depends on contested conventions, not neutral measurement. — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 10; Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 121; An attention economy requires reducing diverse attention to one quantifiable substance. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 228 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold. #expands (0.82) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 121
• An attention economy requires reducing diverse attention to one quantifiable substance. #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 228
• Data-driven targeting achieves an intimate, auto-fitting mould over individual subjects. #exemplifies (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 402