My part-time gig teaching Art & Design at One River School has led me to this piece. The team and students are participating in #oneriverinks, theming out each day to a doodle. I chose the prompt ‘game’ to stay in theme with Ding’s encounter with the ever so elusive, addictive and deceptive ‘Intermittent Reward System.’
What appears to be a harmless notification, opens a can of attention leeches ready to sap every ounce of life, motivation, and happiness away. To have kissed time away into the ether of bit counts of zeros and ones.
Natasha Dow Schull’s, Addiction by Design asks ‘where has it left us?’
The solitary, absorptive activity can suspend time, space, monetary value, social roles, and sometimes even one’s very sense of existence. “You can erase it all at the machines–you can even erase yourself,” The point is to stay in a zone “where nothing else matters.”
Character is defined by a sharp tension between its “culture of chance” and its “culture of control.” Neither control, nor chance, nor the tension between the two drives their play; their aim is not to win but simply to continue.
Addiction by Design – Natasha Dow Shull