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Machine gambling in the ‘zone’: Natasha Dow Schüll’s Addiction by Design
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Hsu, Hansen |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | Natasha Schüll’s Addiction By Design is fascinating, absorbing, and at times, a bit frightening. The book is concerned with the co-production of gambling addiction through the interaction of gambling environments, technologies (slot machines and video poker), and their users. Schüll’s work will have wide relevance to many audiences, including those interested in technology studies, media studies, software studies, game studies, values-in-design, and the psychology and sociology of addiction and other technologically mediated behavioral disorders. Schüll’s central argument hinges on the introduction of two theoretical concepts: the ‘zone’, and ‘asymmetric collusion’. The ‘machine zone’ is an affective state of calm equilibrium where everything seems to disappear, including a sense of one’s own self and body. Unlike the social gambling of cockfights and table games described by Geertz and Goffman, machine gamblers, Schüll argues, are not playing to win, nor participating in a heroic contest of character or a reenactment of status dynamics. Rather, they play to keep playing and to reach and stay in ‘the zone’ as long as possible. The zone is made possible by the tight cybernetic loop between machine and player and by the machine’s ability to give instant feedback on a game’s result. The gambler reaches the zone by increasing the speed of betting until the point where the risks of each individual bet are smoothed out over thousands of plays, establishing a ‘perfect contingency’ between player and machine. Schüll, drawing on child psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, describes perfect contingency as ‘a situation of complete alignment between a given action and the external response to that action, in which distinctions between the two collapse’ (p. 172). |
| Starting Page | 952 |
| Ending Page | 956 |
| Page Count | 5 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1177/0306312713507496 |
| Volume Number | 43 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.natashadowschull.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/book1review-SSS-Hsu.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://scripts.mit.edu/~schull/nds/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/social-studies-of-science-2013-hsu-952-6.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312713507496 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
