Final

THE MEASUREMENT PROBLEM

ByKim Malonec copyright c by Kim Malone, 1999646-872-9285kimmalone@mindspring.com1

Final

The Measurement Problem

is dedicated to the Internet Bubble, whichpaid for its writing. Immeasurable thanks goes to my family and myfriends for their emotional support.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”Albert Einstein“And still they come, new from those nations to which the study of that which can be weighed andmeasured is a consuming love.”W.H. Auden“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”Oscar Wilde“…we are in the paradoxical situation that novelty is more obvious in domains that are often relativelytrivial but easy to measure; whereas in domains that are more essential novelty is very difficult todetermine. There can be agreement on whether a new computer game, rock song, or economic formula isactually novel, and therefore creative, less easy to agree on the novelty of an act of compassion or of aninsight into human nature”Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi"Is it better to be a coal-heaver or a nursemaid; is the charwoman who has brought up eight children of lessvalue to the world than the barrister who has made ahundred thousand pounds? It is useless to ask suchquestions; for nobody can answer them. Not only do the comparative values of charwomen and lawyersrise and fall from decade to decade, but we have no rods with which to measure them even as they are atthe moment"Virgina Woolf “For too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mereaccumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over 800 billion dollars a year, but thatgross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product countsair pollution, and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts speciallocks for our doors and the jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods andthe loss of our natural wonder in chaotic squall. It counts Napalm, and it counts nuclear warheads, andarmored cars for the police to fight the riots in our city. It counts Whitman's rifles and Speck's Knifes andthe television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet, the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play;it does not include the beauty of our poetry, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our publicdebate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everythingin short except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except whywe are proud that we are Americans.Robert Kennedy2