"Everything has value only in so far as it can be exchanged," Horkheimer and Adorno observe, "not in so far as it is something in itself." This assumption has only stuck with us, morphing over the years into the idea that everything can be distilled down to some numerical unit like biometrics, engagement statistics, or dollar values. (It's visible, too, in how online platforms stopped referring to creative entities as "art," and migrated to calling them "content.") As a result, Horkheimer and Adorno write, "[b]ourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes dissimilar things comparable by reducing them to abstract quantities." Such is the problem of thinking in terms of units. Metrics exist to quantify, calculate, and above all, convert. For Horkheimer and Adorno, sameness is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

— Legend of the River King by Alexander B. Joy (19%)