February, 2000

I'm sitting here at my computer while most of America, and the west coast for sure, is asleep and I'm thinking about the numbers. It's all in the numbers. We are a numbered society, compared, categorized and signed up, signed off, stratified, rarefied, societized and mezmerized by the numbers.

President's Day, no longer Lincoln's Birthday or Washington's Birthday, the dates have been slid to the most convenient Monday to serve the numbers of industry at the expense of numbers of a date of birth. Some numbers rise, some fall. What does "President's Day" mean? Lincoln? Washington? Or all of them, Reagan and Clinton included? It's not much of a leap of faith to merely lump them all and take the holiday, not a much further leap to finally call it National Holiday #1 and be done with the whole thing, except for the number.

The NY Times tells me John McCain has gone from the biggest and most exciting number to the least and nearly thrown away number overnight---victim of another number, the ten of the percent by which Bush beat him in North Carolina. He awoke on Sunday, the same man as went to sleep Saturday night, but probably no longer relevant. All those excited media types and there are only them to tell us what's exciting, are now slumped---giving in again to the numbers. This time it's the campaign finance numbers, the big organization number against the small organization number and the bandwagon's lost a wheel. Sorry, John, three's not enough. You are a good man, but a number shot you off that Arizona horse that stumbled with Barry.

And I'm not even surprised. Is there anything possible about which we can be surprised anymore? We'll have a president---this president or that president, but surely a president. And the country will run, no doubt equally well or badly no matter which sits in the Oval Office. Oval is a delightful shape for that office and such a metaphoric piece of luck for us as a nation. Not square, where one might be cornered into decision, not circular which might suggest even handed or thoughtful statesmanship, but the squashed and compromised oval. Leadership diminished to a sat upon zero.

But other numbers keep us from brooding. Thank God for that and for them. Our age number panting breathlessly behind (always behind) our earnings number. Our rank in class number at University judged seriously, ever so seriously against the bid number from a corporate number and the judgements fall either way without names attached. The number of years (or months) before we rise or fall to another numbered job or numbered salary that glistens or tarnishes the numeral that represents us. Bill Gates (#1) has a net worth equal to the bottom 40% of US population. Let's see now, how big would that number be? How many make up the nation's poorest 40%? How many millions does #1 equal? Early in the century, J. Pierpont Morgan owned as much as everyone west of the Mississippi---it's not a new phenomenon.

Stalin said the death of one man was a tragedy, but the death of 100,000 was a news item. Boy, was he ever right. February has 29 days this year to balance accounts.

There must be a rightness to this, the numbers are so inexorable. This e-mail flies to you, not as written words, but as 0's and 1's broken into disparate packages and fired into separate portions of cyberspace to be reassembled by the magic of numbers in computer programs that not one single one of us understands. How much better than the old, limping postman who used to stop for coffee. What a waste of time that was, chatting over exchanged smiles. Can you imagine Lincoln's cyber address at virtual Gettysburg? No one liked the Gettysburg Address at the time---it took a while to sink in and become larger than the words, larger than life. Like McCain, nowdays it would have been instantly and permanently rejected. We are so much luckier today. Freed from thoughtfulness by 200 cable channels and the promise of thousands more as we become technically able, probably day after tomorrow. It's a long wait. Not a complaint mind you, a celebration.

I was reading a piece on Europe's catching up to the US in e-commerce in The Economist yesterday. They speculated on necessary governmental changes, tax incentives, labor regulations and interest rates that will supply capital. They missed it altogether. How can something as well respected as The Economist miss it altogether? How do you build e-commerce without customers to come in the shop? In America, 80% (or thereabouts) of the population have home computers, in Europe 5% (or thereabouts). It's in the numbers, folks. If the US is unstoppable (and surely it will tilt a bit, maybe even stumble) it's because we are the most wired number-suckers on the planet. The computer I write on costs $2,000 in the US and $5,000 here. Talk about numbers! The EU can forget all those incentives and merely subsidize personal computer ownership. Even here, they call them PC's. That's "personal computer" if one looks for a fleeting moment at a name instead of a number. No one here has a "personal" computer---they're all locked up at the office. Europe is still stumbling around with shopping bags from the meat market to the vegetable seller, wrapping everything in waxed paper and grousing about a 15% unemployment rate. That's very picturesque and the way many of us like to live, but competitive? What a laugh!

Europe is about to become a subsidiary of Disney World.

But back to John, poor old John. All those years of prison camp torture, all that old fashioned belief in saying what you mean and meaning it---swept out the window by the numbers. It could be that numbers might save him. It's possible he could abandon the costs of organization and turn to the Net. Be a stand-up guy out there in the hinterlands, but rely on the incomprehensibly large numbers of the free Net to build and sustain a groundswell. But maybe not. Does anyone care anymore? About either Bush or McCain? Or is it all yesterday's numbers? Someone will serve us up a couple candidates and we'll shuffle off to the polls to pretend we still have representative government.

So here I sit, watching the snow flurry against the window and the sun peek in and out of a scattered sky. It's beautiful either way---in shadow or full sun. But I must admit there's a special feeling as it all glitters in momentary sunlight. 5% of the time? 40%? Do I get to feel special at the whim of the cloud cover? There you go folks, it's in the numbers. As it should be? Who knows? As it is, which is enough and we all live and die.

Most of us by numbers.

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