NOTE FOR A TIME CAPSULE
By EDWARD WELLEN
Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA
Yes, I know, the rating services probably never call
you up. But they call me up twenty times a week!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity March 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I take it you sociologists living in what to me is the future (I takeit there's a future, a future with a place for sociologists) will notethe unlikely revolution in taste now going on. For your information,then, here's why the rating services are reflecting a sudden uppingfrom the pelvis to the cortex—just in case this will have become acause for wild surmise.
You probably know what the rating services are ("were," to you; but Idon't want to tense this document up). Most people nowadays don't knowabout the rating services; they know of them.
Every so often I hear someone say darkly, "I don't know about thosepolls. I've never had a call from them and no one I know has ever had acall from them."
I keep quiet or mumble something noncommittal. I could say, truthfully,"I do know about those polls. They ring me up more than twenty timesa week." I could say that but I don't.
Not so much because I don't want to seem a crackpot or a liar asbecause I don't want to spoil a good thing. Or at least what I thinkis a good thing—and for the time being what I think is a good thing iswhat the world thinks is a good thing.
Now, in order for you to get the picture you must understand that theNew York metropolitan area fashions the literary and musical fads ofthe United States and the United States by example and by infiltrationvia writings and movies and recordings fashions the fads of the world.And the New York metropolitan area goes by the opinions I frame.
It probably seems strange to you that I, in any amassing of statisticsmerely one digit in the neighborhood of the decimal point, can claim toexert such far-reaching influence.
But I've seen much the same sort of thing in my work as a CPA. Someonepossessing relatively few shares in a holding company may exercise aninordinate amount of power over the national economy.
An analogous set of operations makes it possible for me to be anesthetic shot of digitalis in the body politic. That's why Bartok'sMikrokosmos is at this writing the top tune and why archaeologyprofessor Dr. Loob is high man on the polls with his TV show DigThis! and why the world has taken such a turn that you may very likelybe calling this the Day of the Egghead.
But you're most likely asking at this point, "Why, in the name ofstatistical probability, did this character get so many calls when somany people got none?" And your next thought is, "Or did he? Was he aparanoiac?"
Here's my answer to your second question. I'm certainly not imaginingany of this. You're bound to come upon some signs of these times andknow what I've said about the revolution in taste is true. Otherwisethere'd be no point in my setting this down or in your reading it.
The hard part is to convince you that the rest of it—about my role—istrue. The trouble is there's nothing about me personally that wouldhelp me convince you. There's nothing uncommon about me except that mytastes were previously uncommon.
As I mentioned, I'm a CPA. I live in a suburb of New York City