I too am scratching my head over Derren B's lottery prediction. Having been to a few of his shows, I'm (of course) loath to believe that he would use technological trickery to do a, uh, trick with. But why not? Haven't magicians always been technological tricksters? It's an emotional thing, wanting to believe he wouldn't. Which is, of course, more power to him, bless his cashmere socks!
And today Matt shows me this. BERG is what was Schulze & Webb, and what is now schulze & webb & armitage & jones & pals, and this is what they've just built, using RFIDs, phones, levers, and just a bit of magic*.
*not really, it's just Sufficiently Advanced Technology.
Lastly a disclaimer, I should point out that Derren Brown features quite heavily in an upcoming commission of ours, Science of Scams, and that this is my personal blog and opinions, and that I have no idea whether or not he actually wears cashmere socks, sorry.
Ah, Clarke... I love the magic/technology argument. One of my faves. (http://blog.mrseb.co.uk/2009/05/its-a-kind-of-magic/)
Surely he didn't use the Wisdom of Crowds... surely. Kudos for working out a scam that is almost believable tho'.
Unless he really did do it with automatic writing... maybe...
Posted by: Sebastian | September 15, 2009 at 17:02