It’s an epistemology / ontology question, as folks familiar with the humanities would spot in little time. Aka it’s not “data” until something empowers the created metric a meaning.
I think the point is that "data" is useless until it becomes "knowledge," and that turning data into knowledge is a complicated and philosophical act. Business being business, most of the people running the show were never interested in the deeper questions of how to create knowledge. They just wanted a new arrow in the quiver. Once they realized the cost of actually doing the work, it became much less appealing.
The map is not the territory.
https://www.amazon.com/Raw-Data-Oxymoron-Infrastructures/dp/...