So you say knowledge wants to be free?

If knowledge wants to be free, why do we work so hard keeping it trapped in scores and ratings whose meanings change depending on which questions were asked and who answered them?

Why don’t we liberate knowledge from its many prisons by embodying it in measurement systems that mean the same thing (within the range of uncertainty) no matter which questions on a topic are asked and no matter who answers them?

We routinely share knowledge quickly and easily when it’s about time, length, temperature, energy, mass, etc. Methods, theories, models, and tools developed over the last 90+ years show how we could be doing the same thing for literacy, health, functionality, environmental management, and every other major area of concern in the UN Sustainability Development Goals.

There’s a lot of talk among sustainability advocates about how urgent the need is for transformative efforts, investments, and technologies. It seems to…