Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06689_Field_TCUM T254.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

“to put the finger on” says that somebody’s “number” has
come up. At the extreme of the graph profiles of the
statisticians there is the frankly expressed object of
manipulation of population for varieties of power purposes. For
example, in any large stockbroker’s office there is a modern
medicine man known as “Mr. Odd Lots.” His magical function is
to study the daily purchases and sales of the small buyers on
the big exchanges. Long experience has revealed that these
small buyers are wrong 80 per cent of the time. A statistical
profile of the failure of the little man to be in touch enables the
big operators to be about 80 per cent right. Thus from error
comes truth; and from poverty, riches, thanks to numbers. This
is the modern magic of numbers. The more primitive attitude
toward the magical power of numbers appeared in the dread of
the English when William the Conqueror numbered them and
their chattels in what the folk called the Doomsday Book.