Gamblers pursue a loss-of-self attentional state that machine design deliberately engineers

Evidence

As the capacity of digital technologies to command attention (and not only to reroute it) has become an object of popular concern, anthropologists have begun to study the designers of such systems and popular reactions against them. Schüll’s (2014) work on the design of gambling machinery, which has been taken up far beyond anthropology, describes how lessons from behaviorist psychology are used to encourage compulsive gambling. Indeed, for her interlocutors, the “machine zone,” where they feel that they can lose themselves in the flow of gambling, is a desired attentional state, despite its often negative social, economic, and health consequences. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 41

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the surveillance-capitalism literature and to the ‘machine zone’ concept familiar from addiction studies; resonates with the reader’s attention/platforms focus. — connects to: The gaming industry pioneered the addiction design model Facebook later adopted. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1433; Casino machines are engineered to maximize time-on-device and play to extinction. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1435; Slot players seek a dissociative self-forgetting state, not entertainment or winnings. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1434 (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘machine zone’ as a designed, desired attentional state parallels the ‘immodesty moral panics’ article’s theme of engineered cultural states being both sought and condemned.

Related

• Slot players seek a dissociative self-forgetting state, not entertainment or winnings. (similarity 0.89)
• Casino machines are engineered to maximize time-on-device and play to extinction. (similarity 0.85)
• The gaming industry pioneered the addiction design model Facebook later adopted. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Mass amusement reproduces the mechanized work process in leisure #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 107
• Gambling addiction may stem from intrinsic surprise rewards overriding negative expected value. #complicates (0.80) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 909
• Behavioral engineered self-control masks society’s ultimate control over individuals #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1386