4 ms·

Fascinating history, reminding us once again how scary much of the tech we take for granted really is...

by veddox 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago
Is it? My uncle was the PR man for the Club Casino in Hampton NH (no gambling, but live entertainment.) His boss was an advocate for advertising in the Boston Phoenix but my uncle thought that Club Casino patrons didn't read the Phoenix. So my uncle got 3000 visitors to fill our a survey and I transcribed the cards into my TRS-80 Coco 3, printed out a crude report, and circled one number that he asked for. I got paid enough to replace the Coco 3 with a 286-based computer. My mom thought the report was ugly and not worth the money, but knowing how many thousands of dollars we saved, I should have held out for a 386. When politicians are building coalitions they have many discussions about things comparable to "do our customers read newspaper X?" and having data to work with definitely changes what you do.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  > So my uncle got 3000 visitors to fill our a survey and I transcribed the cards into my TRS-80 Coco 3, printed out a crude report, and circled one number that he asked for. This can be read two ways: Did you give him the number he wanted, or did the survey end up being a favorable number to his cause without any influence by you? I think that's what the parent was getting at, that having reports can give an illusion of propriety regardless of whether someone is playing games with the numbers on the back end.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    The surveys had about 50 boxes that customers could tick, someone looking at it would have no idea that the whole survey project was motivated by the Phoenix question. I didn't until my Uncle told me the story years later. So, like the double-blind in medicine, we took a lot of effort to get a legitimate result. In the end my Uncle and his boss were not driven by ideology, but had different viewpoints and both knew that they could save enough money by stopping ads in the Phoenix that it was worth doing the study to prove it.

Fascinating history, reminding us once again how scary much of the tech we take for granted really is...

by veddox 6y ago

Fascinating history, reminding us once again how scary much of the tech we take for granted really is...

Is it? My uncle was the PR man for the Club Casino in Hampton NH (no gambling, but live entertainment.) His boss was an advocate for advertising in the Boston Phoenix but my uncle thought that Club Casino patrons didn't read the Phoenix. So my uncle got 3000 visitors to fill our a survey and I transcribed the cards into my TRS-80 Coco 3, printed out a crude report, and circled one number that he asked for. I got paid enough to replace the Coco 3 with a 286-based computer. My mom thought the report was ugly and not worth the money, but knowing how many thousands of dollars we saved, I should have held out for a 386. When politicians are building coalitions they have many discussions about things comparable to "do our customers read newspaper X?" and having data to work with definitely changes what you do.

RankingMember 6y ago
> So my uncle got 3000 visitors to fill our a survey and I transcribed the cards into my TRS-80 Coco 3, printed out a crude report, and circled one number that he asked for. This can be read two ways: Did you give him the number he wanted, or did the survey end up being a favorable number to his cause without any influence by you? I think that's what the parent was getting at, that having reports can give an illusion of propriety regardless of whether someone is playing games with the numbers on the back end.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  The surveys had about 50 boxes that customers could tick, someone looking at it would have no idea that the whole survey project was motivated by the Phoenix question. I didn't until my Uncle told me the story years later. So, like the double-blind in medicine, we took a lot of effort to get a legitimate result. In the end my Uncle and his boss were not driven by ideology, but had different viewpoints and both knew that they could save enough money by stopping ads in the Phoenix that it was worth doing the study to prove it.