Me, You, and Meme Reviews: A Million Random Digits with 100,00 Normal Deviates, PART TWO

Welcome back to Me, You, and Meme Reviews, that feature where we dig into those products that gain cult-like followings and garner hundreds of frivolous reviews. And this time around, we’re focusing on that seminal text, A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. Last week we unpacked the history of the book, but let’s take a quick recap in case you’re too lazy to hit that link there.

The book was published in 1955, when computers were as big as rooms and also weren’t great at generating random numbers. Still random numbers were important, so Rand Corporation compiled the numbers, then DECADES later, long after the text has lost all relevance, the company reissued the book. In 2001. When people found it on Amazon and found it odd.

So odd that they wrote reviews like this:

Now, with that little taste to whet your palette, let’s waste no more time in getting to the main course.

At Review Party Dot Com, we know the value of a good, quality, well-written review, one that is clear and concise and to the point. Meme reviews these are not. That said, we do know that memes have entertainment value. So to balance the two sides of our review souls, we GET THE ACTUAL PRODUCT, then review it both ways.

See it?!

Hard cover. Old pages. Real book. Knowledge on page. Look! LOOK!

Okay, enough jabbering. This review is also available on Goodreads (and in episode 107), but here are my meme and real reviews of A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates.

My Meme Review
Used to be you’d ask a lady for her digits, call her up, and if you were lucky, you’d spend a night enjoying the warm embrace of another human. Used to be simple. Used to make sense. Used to feel real.

No more. No, now the only thing that grips you, day after day, is worry. But then again, that just gets worn down by an ever-pressing weariness, the kind that draws the life out of you, bit by bit, until the morning you pull your knife on that stranger in the mirror.

I don’t remember when it was, I first spotted a femme droid in the city; she was standing there like any other creep, waiting for the bus home from work. I’d say it was a crisp autumn day, but every day is so Goddamn hot anymore, it’s hard to tell. Maybe it was just the chill I felt in my bones, my heart, in that useless stuff called flesh and blood.

These days, that stuff’s pretty rare, and companionship more scarce than ever.

“How aboutta night with a ‘real woman’” they say from the corners, “don’tcha want a goil who don’t get tired?” Whoever the hell taught’em to speak that way, I’ve half a mind to- well, let’s just say it’s about as appealing as a straight shave from a cyclops, these Goddamned sirens.

Funny. Even now, my business is chasing sirens.

And even if they aren’t living, they are my living; so I guess I owe them, them and the RAND. When these bots run off with some sad sap’s pocket change, or worse, I know where to look. I know how to talk. Once upon a time, a wink and some wit would land you answers. These days it’s a mathematical masquerade; we dance around each other until a certain sequence rings in their ears. Or what you’d call ears, anyway.

I stand, book in hand, and quote, like some damned fool pouring out his heart of poetry or a mad preacher lamenting the end of days. And maybe I’m both.

“57186” “40218” “16544”

That’s all it takes. They settle into themselves, somehow give the impression they’re blushing but without any blood. Sometimes all I’ll manage is one digit and the code is cracked. Like they were dying for someone to talk to, dying to be treated like something more than what they are.

But how can you be dying for something if you never really lived for something?

And is never really living any worse than living in a world that doesn’t look like what you remember?

There’s an old joke, goes: do androids dream of electric sheep? The ones I meet never sleep again, but one once let slip that they do dream, or something like it. And it’s all random numbers. Endless combinations and infinite possibilities. Like in the book. Like in the RAND.

I come to them speaking their dreams and fanatasies, and then I snuff’em out.
How is it that I feel sorry for them, a touch of envy in my eyes as theirs go dim.

Maybe that’s just the weariness talking.
What a weight to be human. Still.

My Real Review
In the modern era, the age of the internet, a time of smart-anythings and bluetooth-everythings, with wifi ALWAYS enabled, this book is not going to offer you much in the way of practical utility.

If you need random numbers, in bulk or otherwise, a heavy book is not likely your go-to option; the computing power of today overwhelmingly dwarfs what was capable at the time of this book’s publication. The ENIAC, which was 8’x3’x100’ in size and had to be manually rewired to change its “programming” for a new task, could calculate missile trajectories in 15 seconds (the same calculations taking a human two weeks). Today we would struggle to even measure the slightness of time taken to make the same calculations.

Modern iPhones have more processing power than any machine deemed a supercomputer through the year 2001. Coincidentally, also in 2001, this book was reissued by RAND, and its apparent novelty and “random”ness led to a high (but very countable) number of whimsical reviews, this one included.

So what can you do with this book? What’s it good for?

Well, it takes up space on a shelf or coffee table. If you enjoy data, statistics, math, or just old book smells and yellowed pages, you’d probably enjoy an old copy. No one needs the reissue, not even as a joke.

Much like How to Avoid Huge Ships, the market for this book shrinks evermore as time and technology take over. If you want the history lesson, here they are, but we might as well just leave them be.

I mean, you can actually read How to Avoid Huge Ships, so no knocks against it. And you will learn, too. But there isn’t much to be learned here. It’s just numbers. Let the dead lie.

…

SO, there you have it. I give it a three star average between the two reviews. Check the blog for other Meme Review posts, or anything else that strikes your interest.