Still Stranded
On the Shoulder
of the Information Superhighway
by John FitzGerald, publisher emeritus, NEW IMPROVED HEAD.
[The author notes: The bulk of this article appeared in my newsletter (the precursor of our sister site) in 1995. I have brought it up to date with tasteful and pertinent interjections, and other interjections. The original article is printed in boldface and the interjections in our usual font.]My keen interest in statistical analysis often takes me to that great centre of statistical research, the race track. There I and the other researchers engage in crucial scientific investigation unhampered by the stultifying effects of research grants, the quest for tenure, or the impropriety of screaming like a supercharged leaf blower when one of your experiments succeeds.Not surprisingly, this important research centre has been one of the first sites to be visited by the information superhighway. The race track and the growing network of betting parlours (whoops, teletheatres) are just torrents of information these days.
Playing the ponies is information-intensive.
The author interjects: Actually, it's data-intensive. I seem not to have had my shtick down in those days. As YOU, dear reader, know from your reading on this site and our sister site, information consists of data, but not all data are informative. Hardly any are, I'd wager. End of interjectionThe harness racing program of the Ontario Jockey Club, for example, presents about 1,300 pieces of information for a ten-horse race. Then you also have to deal with the welter of information presented on television monitors and the public address system about odds, expected prices, equipment changes, driver changes, unlisted races, and so on.In addition to all the information we horseplayers in Toronto get about the local races, we now get information about (and the opportunity to bet on) races in Windsor, New Jersey, Florida, and Hong Kong. According to proponents of the information superhighway, all of us should be happier than ever. However, my joy at these developments is somewhat muted, especially as I'm sure they presage the development of the greater information superhighway so many look forward to so hopefully.
The first effect of the information superhighway has been to provide more information than the local communications channel can handle. As a result, the flow of certain types of information has had to be reduced, and the reduction has had little to do with the importance of the information.
To a large degree the race track functions like a futures exchange. You evaluate the profitability of a bet by considering the expected payoff and your probability of collecting it. Before the information superhighway arrived, there were enough television monitors at the track that the payoffs you were interested in would appear frequently enough on one or the other of them that you could estimate the profitability of a bet fairly well.
These days, the monitors are a confusing potpourri of the odds on the local races, the local odds on the out-of-town races, and the out-of-town odds on the out-of-town races. We get expected prices for bets we don't even get to make, like the quiniela and the rolling triple. To make room for the out-of-town information, the local prices for a type of bet called an exactor are displayed less frequently than they used to be. You can occasionally find massive value in an exactor, but these days I usually manage to find an expected exactor price I'm interested in once, about eight minutes before race time, when it's not very helpful. I don't bet exactors very often any more.
Another interjection: These days similar phenomena are glaringly obvious in other fields. The press – which, as we know, styles itself as "the media," short for "media of communication" – now employs a few simple principles of triage to help it stay afloat in the flood of data with which it must now deal.What you get is the "information" the superhighway operator wants you to have, and it's not just a matter of expected prices. I do not recall anyone asking the local equine research community whether it wanted to play races at Gulfstream, or at the Meadowlands, or at Flamboro Downs, or at Windsor Raceway. You are just presented with those races. Of course, that's highly reminiscent of certain practices of the cable television industry, isn't it? And need I remind anyone that the cable television industry hopes to be the foundation of the information superhighway?Here are the rules the media use to assign priority to "news" items:
In medical research these days the old-fashioned review of the literature about a topic has been replaced by meta-analysis, a process by which differences between groups in different studies are converted to a common measuring scale and the results of all the different studies aggregated so a single conclusion can be reached (to be honest meta-analysis was popular in 1995, but then you'd expect a technologized field like medicine to be on the cutting edge of technological dysfunction). This procedure actually has a respectable provenance, having first been proposed by the great (although unknown, since not a pop star accused of pedophilia or a basketball star accused of rape or a blonde pop star with fake boobs and a phony story about being a virgin) Karl Pearson, but it is used these days in ways he probably hoped would be avoided. Studies are thrown willy-nilly into the hopper of meta-analysis regardless of their suitability, and a conclusion ground out regardless of its validity, and researchers write letters to the journals publishing the meta-analyses about how their study shouldn't have been included, or wasn't included but should have been.
- If it's about a television, movie, music or sports star, publish it. Everybody needs to know about Britney Spears' case of 24-hour matrimony, for example.
- If it involves death, preferably gory, publish it.
- As or the rest of the crap, squeeze it in where you can, but spend as little time on it as possible. Powerful people don't spend all that time preparing media handouts for you to go questioning them. If they think Belinda Stronach is a credible candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, you don't need to be going finding out what she actually has to say for herself. Believe it or not, Frank Stronach is probably a lot smarter than you are. So write about Belindamania. What? You don't see any? Your hearing isn't too good, either. Write about Belinda-bloody-mania.
And I have gone from being a jazz fan to being a fan of a single genre of jazz, hard bop. So much easier to manage the CD collection that way.
There was no groundswell of public opinion demanding so-called reality television. Or TV weather reports featuring satellite photos and radar screens and counts of that mysterious substance, the kilopascal, when all you want to know is whether it's going to rain this afternoon. Or Ben Mulroney.Ultimately, I suppose, the information superhighway will develop into a wonderful system where, with a mouse, a modem, some expensive software, an expensive monthly connection charge to your local cable multinational....Tell me I didn't know what I was talking about. Tell me....as I was saying, an expensive cable connection and an additional charge made just on principle, you will be able to call up expected prices for any possible bet (something you can't do today) as well as reams of useful information that couldn't possibly be presented in the racing program or the Daily Racing Form, and then make all the bets you want, all from the comfort of home.In the nine years since this article was written this dream has yet to be realized.My life will then be over as I know it.I used to be able to see actual horse races in Toronto. However, with the centralization of racing at Woodbine, the most sensible course of action for me is to play at the teletheatre at Greenwood. That is, instead of sitting at home watching television, I get to sit at Greenwood and watch television from Woodbine, or Windsor, or wherever. Once they add a few more lanes to the information superhighway, though, my only choice will probably be to sit at home watching television and paying through the nose for it.
In 2004 you can bet on-line or by phone. You don't have to leave the house. No one's making it difficult for you to leave the house, though. Yet.At least the racing channel will probably cost less than the porn, home shopping, and baldness cure channels we can expect to occupy the most populated stretches of the information superhighway.We didn't have Viagra then, of course. And now back to our blockbuster final sentence.I have seen the future, and unfortunately it works.
Still Stranded on the Shoulder of the Information Superhighway © Coolth, 1995, 2004
Posted on March 4, 2004
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