What Happened in Vegas — with Natasha Dow Schüll

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4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design, has spent years studying how slot machines hold gamblers spellbound, in an endless loop of play. She never imagined the addictive designs which she had first witnessed in Las Vegas would go bounding into Silicon Valley and reappear on virtually every smartphone screen worldwide. In the first segment of this two-part interview, Natasha Dow Schüll offers a prescient warning to users and designers alike: How far can the attention economy go toward stealing another moment of your time? Farther than you might imagine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There was a woman who was a severe narcleptic. She said, you know, I fall asleep,
0:05.6	driving on the highway, having sex. The only place I do not fall asleep is playing video poker.
0:13.0	That's Natasha Dow Scholl.
0:14.4	She's a cultural anthropologist who conducted years of research in Las Vegas casinos.
0:19.3	She wanted to understand the culture of gambling and
0:23.8	because slot machines prize more money out of gambler's hands
0:26.8	than any other game of chance on the casino floor.
0:29.6	We think of Vegas, Black Jap, high stakes, the tuxedo, but really the cash cow, the golden geese are these
0:38.8	basically adult arcade games that take money, right?
0:44.0	Slop machines alone account for upwards of 70 to 80 percent of a typical casinos revenue.
0:49.1	It struck Natasha as remarkable that this
0:55.0	remarkable
0:52.0	would form the Casino's profit center
0:54.0	until she began to understand how those machines evolved.
0:57.0	Something about this activity
1:00.0	and the way that it modulates your attention right it literally can keep a severe
1:06.2	anarchleptic awake so something is happening there right the gamblers
1:10.6	Natasha interviews know what's happening.
1:13.2	They can tally up the sporadic wins and the constant losses,
1:16.4	and they can see they're headed towards financial ruin.
1:19.6	But the money is almost besides the point.
1:22.1	What they're pursuing is an experience.
	...

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