New metrics for the arts
If we want to measure the arts, we'll need new metrics
The Artful Manager
The challenge is in applying existing metrics (dollars, headcounts, activity, test scores) to such complex and hazy goals (truth, beauty, pleasure, wisdom). To this task I humbly submit the following metrics, already spinning around the world for other purposes.* hedon
a single unit of pleasure, already used in ethical mathematics (don't ask, I don't know)
* milliHelen
the amount of physical beauty required to launch one ship
* warhol
a unit of fame or hype lasting exactly fifteen minutes. Some useful multiples from the Wikipedia include:
o kilowarhol -- famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days. A sort of metric "nine day wonder."
o megawarhol -- famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years. The type of person your parents talk about all the time, but of whom you've never heard from anyone else.If we really hunker down, we could suggest a USRDA for each of the above (U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance). And each cultural production could publicly post the detailed value of its contents: ''Tonight's performance of Romeo and Juliet contains 250 hedons, 950 milliHelens, and 14.9 megawarhols.''
