Episode 25: Quantified Humanity

Does everything need to be measured? The concept of technology driven quantification and measuring has far reaching impact and is not often discussed which makes it a perfect Digital Optimist topic. The capability for people, organizations, and products to be rated, to be quantified, to be measured, in very public ways is expanding. The door is now wide open as people have credit scores they never asked for, UBER drivers are rated, and social media has a currency of measurement all its own called “likes”. Gazing into the future, we will get new measurements like Trust Scores that will have positive and negative impacts on people. Although data and analytics are wonderful for bringing clarity to the Truth, humanity may see some interesting consequences to creating measurement systems for very human characteristics such as the level of trust we can put in a person.