Abstract :
We examine the draw and consequences of gambling, a.k.a. gaming, from a somewhat unorthodox perspective: exploitation of the urge to be energy efficient in a technology transformed world. Our own draw will be on the contention of the late Harvard linguist, George Kingsley Zipfi that human behavior is guided by "The Principle of Least Effort." We argue that the powerful attraction of gaming is self-similar, in a fractal sense, to the seductive power of new technology. The promise of gaining access to what we want, when we want, with minimal, ideally, no, exertion. Winning, like technology, does the work so that we don\´t have to. The deep-seated, "reptilian brain," urge to take effort relieving /food energy conserving, shortcuts when offered and convenient is addicting. It feeds on itself. Like the frog that boils to death in slowly heated water, like the gambling addict who doesn\´t think he has a problem, like the more than 30 percent of Americans who have eaten and non-exercised their way into the legions of the obese, the ship-out-of-water instinct to let the other guy do the work is getting us into hotter and hotter water. What\´s needed is a thermometer alerting the cortex to the possibility that winning, like all things "Made Easy, " is not necessarily knee-jerk good. Drawing on an article by New York Times reporter, Gary Rivlin, our supporting case-in-point is the rapidly advancing technical exploitation with consequences of the urge to gain with least effort in the guise of slots.
