There is a disjuncture between what you see spinning in front of you on these vernots, basically just an animated reel on a video screen. And some would say that this is a case for ah youno, that this is misleading graphicsd and runs foul of consumer protection laws. It totally does. But what lawyer is going to be insentvised to bring that case to trial? What jury is going to understand the math? Like, there's so much heavy lifting that would have to be done there?"
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.