Just because you can't measure the ambient temperature in liters doesn't mean the liter is a useless metric.
FWIW, Cory Doctorow already dealt with this issue in "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". In it, the measure of social capital is called Whuffie, and there were multiple scores based on it. Mentioned in the book were:
- absolute Whuffie (Which, contrary to the article's title, is meaningful. An absolute measure of clout is what's being implied by the observation that everyone knows who Barack Obama is, and the number of people who know much about me can be measured in the dozens.)
- 'right-handed' Whuffie, which is a measure of a person's reputation among people you regard highly. Think "personalized Google results."
- 'left-handed' Whuffie, which measures a person's reputation among people you regard poorly.
FWIW, Cory Doctorow already dealt with this issue in "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". In it, the measure of social capital is called Whuffie, and there were multiple scores based on it. Mentioned in the book were:
- absolute Whuffie (Which, contrary to the article's title, is meaningful. An absolute measure of clout is what's being implied by the observation that everyone knows who Barack Obama is, and the number of people who know much about me can be measured in the dozens.)
- 'right-handed' Whuffie, which is a measure of a person's reputation among people you regard highly. Think "personalized Google results."
- 'left-handed' Whuffie, which measures a person's reputation among people you regard poorly.