Figures, by Gillian

During my working life at IBM we often quoted a favorite catch-phrase, the tyranny of numbers. As you can well imagine, we were for the most part, like most if not all businesses, largely ruled by numbers. But this particular term originated in the computer world of the 1950’s, not so long before I began working for IBM in 1966, when computers were still the size of a house and you literally opened a door and went inside one to fix whatever ailed it. Computer engineers were unable to increase the performance of their designs at this time due to the huge number of components involved. In theory, every component needed to be wired to every other component, which were typically strung together via wire-wrapping and soldering by hand, a large part of my job for the first two years of my career. In order to improve performance, more components would be needed, and it seemed that future designs would consist entirely of countless components connected by endless wiring installed and endlessly repaired manually by countless people.

We were freed from this particular tyranny by the silicon chip, reducing that multi-faceted piece of house-sized equipment to something that can fit inside your watch. But the phrase has, unsurprisingly, never lost it’s appeal. I say ‘unsurprisingly’ because we are ever increasingly, it seems, ruled in every aspect of our lives by facts and figures; perhaps more accurately the facts of figures, in everything from the entire planet and indeed the universe down to every individual. The numbers applied to both the universe and even just our planet are so huge most of us cannot even grasp them. Our sun is one of an estimated two to four hundred billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. Does that really mean anything to you? It loses me! Just the age of this planet, roughly 4.5 billion years, is beyond most of us. In an effort to help us understand such huge figures some clever people have tried to put them into a different perspective. The age of the earth, for instance, and it’s major events, have been portrayed as a 24-hour clock.* On this scale, humans don’t appear until almost 11.59 pm, dinosaurs at 10.56, and I must tell you that we didn’t manage to invent sexual reproduction until after six in the evening. (Incidentally, my own problem with this depiction is – when exactly does midnight arrive and what happens then??)

As to the personal, I used to know what I weighed, and was sadly aware that that figure (in more than one sense of the word!) indicated that I was overweight, except back in those politically incorrect days I was just ‘fat’. But simple weight is no longer good enough! Now I know what my BMI number is, which in turn tells me that if I don’t lose some exact number of pounds, I shall not be old-style fat, nor new-style overweight, but new-age obese! Talk about tyranny!

We seem to have fallen into some kind of paint by numbers version of reality, don’t we? We fail to vote because, according to the poll numbers, we already know who will win, so why bother?

If we do vote, for many of us it is meaningless because we live in a district gerrymandered – based on yet other numbers – to ensure one party will always win. Our President is voted in by one set of numbers and out by another, depending on which way our country choses to count.

This tyranny of numbers is nothing new. Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime minister in the mid-eighteen hundreds, famously said there are three levels of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

In 2010, a man named David Boyle wrote a book entitled The Tyranny of Numbers. ** He examines our obsession with numbers. He reminds us of the danger of taking numbers so seriously at the expense of what is non-measurable, non-calculable: intuition, creativity, imagination, and happiness.

‘We count people, but not individuals. We count exam results rather than intelligence, benefit claimants instead of poverty …… Politicians pack their speeches with skewed statistics: crime rates are either rising or falling depending on who is doing the counting. We are in a world in which everything is designed only to be measured. If it can’t be measured it can be ignored. The problem is what numbers don’t tell you – they won’t interpret, they won’t inspire, and they won’t tell you precisely what causes what.’

It feels so strange. As they so often do, things have come full circle. By inventing our way out of the original tyranny of numbers, we created the very devices which now create the new tyranny.

Yet there is good news. Am I not right in thinking that the LGBT community is less a victim of all the numbers games than most? Perhaps it is an unexpected benefit of having been invisible for so long. We have never been, and right now it looks as if we never will be, identified in the U.S. census.We didn’t exist so we couldn’t – and to some degree still cannot – be counted. No-one can come up with accurate statistics about us. They don’t know what beer we drink or restaurants we favor. They don’t know what ads to send to our TV’s and computers. They don’t even know where we live. Statistical generalities about our community are almost impossible. And on the other side of the coin, I think we tend to care much less about their stats anyway; possibly because they so infrequently include us or apply to us as a group, but I prefer to believe it is simply because we are more independent, more free-thinking, than many.

And I am safe in sticking with that because there are, and perhaps never will be, any statistics to prove me wrong!

* https://flowingdata.com/2012/10/09/history-of-earth-in-24-hour-clock/https://

** www.goodreads.com/book/show/2556446.The_Tyranny_of_Numbers

© June 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Pig Latin by Phillip Hoyle

I feel like the kid on the playground who feels left out, the one chosen last for a team, the one who has to read to the class but knows she won’t do well, the only one that doesn’t know Pig Latin. I feel like my father did when he picked up one of his grandsons at middle school. My nephew and a friend sat together in the back seat and talked with one another about their computers. Dad said he didn’t understand a thing they said for the duration of the twenty-minute drive home. I feel like I’ve fallen behind the whole world, sure I’d find questions on the current GED test incomprehensible. I feel like I’m falling off the grid. “Stop the world, I want to get off” captures some of my sentiment, but why this despair? I get around life just fine, enjoy reasonable work, nice enough friends, and occasionally even leadership. I’m not sure what I feel is despair, but I do feel pressures of a new job, one that I am interested to do but realize that it pushes me into a world of assumed knowledge that I don’t possess.

Computers are not new to me. In the late 1980s I met several PCs with their word processors. For ten years I successfully wrote book-length manuscripts using my PC WPs. To my family’s consternation, I’d tie up the home phone line in order to visit a friend’s bulletin board that gave me access to Shareware and some games. I heard the talk, appreciated the crude graphics, and came to appreciate the advantages my computer and word processor gave me. I enjoyed my experiments with Paint Brush and even tried my hand with some simple data bases.

I had bought the PC in order to write. I bought it at the suggestion of a writer and an editor, purchasing it at the outset of a project I had agreed to do and finished paying it off when I received my writer’s fee. I learned on the job by making mistake after mistake and solving the problems sometimes on my own, sometimes following the advice of others more experienced than I. So I learned to adopt my software and computer function with DOS smart commands, a few new programs, and several creative uses. I paid attention to what the computer needed and became at least moderately efficient in my applications. In the 1990s I entered a conversation—one of those on-line things now usually called a blog—one concerned with topics of professional interest; but I didn’t find the discussions all that interesting or pertinent. I think my life was changing too quickly, my interests moving towards the visual arts.

Still, I wrote. Still I maintained some records in a database. Still I experimented with Paint Brush. But most of my attention was focused on my art table with paper and ink, canvass and paint, design and technique. When my editors at the publishing house no longer could tolerate my antique technology, I got an Apple, then another more modern PC, and finally my PC laptop that went so fast I could never keep up. By then I had lost the curiosity factor. The WP was okay although not as convenient as the writers software I’d liked for years. Word for Windows didn’t thrill me. In fact, I never really got used to Windows. It seemed as if the attempt to make the computer more user-friendly just irritated me. I couldn’t see what was happening.

I believe my quick forays into Cyberspace were really the most intimidating factor, the ones that left me feeling like I wasn’t cutting it. I recall scares when my computer would start doing frightening things. I wondered would it die a cruel death? Explode into flames? I didn’t know but timidly accommodated myself to this unfriendly playground world.

Oh it’s gotten better for me in the 2000s. I am more at home, but suddenly I am working with “The SAGE Blog”—it always reminds me of the old movie “The Blob”—and threatens to engulf me, taking over my time and attention, and threatening to alter me in ways I don’t invite. I guess the problem is that the Blog is so social in its nature: its contributions, comments, and maintenance. I’ve always worked with people successfully, but now it seems too many of them are speaking Pig Latin or some other language I don’t easily understand. One very friendly and helpful techie said, “Well, Phillip, welcome to the cyber world.” But I’m not a techie or even a Treckie. I’m on a journey of learning but feel like I’m floating through this new, endless space with no thrusters. Still I am learning.

This in Pig Latin:

Omesay aysday Iway eelfay atthay Iway annotcay understandway atwhay isway expectedway ofway emay. Easeplay ebay atientpay. Iway aymay otnay understandway ethay echnicaltay eedsnay ofway ybercay ommunicationscay ellway, utbay Iway amway oingday ethay objay. Eoplepay owhay oday understandway areway akingmay itway appenhay inway itespay ofway ymay eeblefay attemptsway. Ifway ingsthay ogay ellway, ouyay ancay eginbay eadingray oriesstay onway ourway ownway ogblay extnay Ondaymay. Atwhay unfay itway illway ebay.

Quick; back to English.

Some days I feel that I cannot understand what is expected of me. Please be patient. I may not understand the technical needs of cyber communications well, but I am doing the job. People who do understand are making it happen in spite of my feeble attempts. If things go well, you can begin reading stories on our own blog next Monday. What fun it will be.

Again, thanks for your patience. I’m learning. Say a prayer or something for me that I will do the work well.

Note: This piece was read to the SAGE Telling Our Stories group at the end of September last year, just before this blog appeared. We’re celebrating the completion of our first year this month!


About the Author


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com