Maybe every abstraction is a finite state machine, and we can construct an analog circuit of any of them. I have an opinion about metrics where they are not the data, but the emergent analog signal from a system.

The idea of collecting data and deriving metrics from it is absurd when you look at your system as a thing that has inputs and an output and the line for the output goes up or down over time. The beauty of these industrial systems is that the makers understood this principle. The system produces a signal that bears meaning that these interfaces express.