The problem with having a lot of stuff, he said, is that at some point the stuff starts ruling you.

http://farmerandfarmer.org/mastery/surf.html

"But what Gandhi understood is that tools are most useful to the people that own them.

And villagers didn’t own factories."

http://farmerandfarmer.org/mastery/production.html

"We use tools to build our tools. We use an ax, a hammer, and a saw to make a cabin, and we use Python, Django, and Apache to build a web service. These upstream tools are crucial in shaping our society. A world with no hammers would have no houses."

Which brings me to my second point: all metrics leave something out. Often, they leave the most important things out.

http://farmerandfarmer.org/mastery/missions.html

"We see this principle at varying levels in some of our tools today. I call them cyclical tools. The iPhone empowers the developer ecosystem that helps drive its adoption. A bike strengthens the person who pedals it. Open-source software educates its potential contributors. A hallmark of cyclical tools is that they create open loops: the bike strengthens its rider to do things other than just pedal the bike.

Cyclical tools are like trees, whose falling leaves fertilize the soil in which they grow."