Randomness

Revision as of 15:29, 16 July 2011 (view source)

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Life itself is full of randomness and the inexplicable, and it is no small wonder that children and adults alike incorporate chance into their daily lives, as if to tame it. Games of chance are one of the four fundamental categories of games that all humans play, according to the French cultural historian Roger Caillois. Whereas ''agon'' are competitive games dependent upon skill, ''mimicry,'' games of imagination, and ''ilinx'' are games causing disorder and loss of control, ''alea'' are games of chance. Craps, roulette, the lottery -- these are games with unpredictable outcomes. Taken from the Latin name for dice games, ''alea'' "negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications" (17). All is said to depend on luck. There are no assignable causes.

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In his ''Arcades Project'' on 19th century Paris, Walter Benjamin devotes an entire section to dice games and gambling, a curious assemblage of notes and extracts with sources ranging from Casanova to Friedrich Engels. "Gambling," Benjamin quotes Anatole France as saying, "is a hand-to-hand encounter with Fate" (498 [O4A]). Every spin of the roulette wheel is an opportunity to show that fate smiles upon the player. Fortunes rise and fall in the blink of an eye, the roll of the die, or the cut of the cards. Every gambler knows this, accepts it, and even relishes it.

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In his ''Arcades Project'' on nineteenth-century Paris, Walter Benjamin devotes an entire section to dice games and gambling, a curious assemblage of notes and extracts with sources ranging from Casanova to Friedrich Engels. "Gambling," Benjamin quotes Anatole France as saying, "is a hand-to-hand encounter with Fate" (498 [O4A]). Every spin of the roulette wheel is an opportunity to show that fate smiles upon the player. Fortunes rise and fall in the blink of an eye, the roll of the die, or the cut of the cards. Every gambler knows this, accepts it, and even relishes it.

The allure of gambling -- and more generally, the allure of chance in all games -- lies in the role of uncertainty. Uncertainty is so compelling that even otherwise skill-based games usually incorporate formal elements of chance, such as the coin toss at the beginning of a football game. As Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman put it, uncertainty "is a key component of meaningful play" (174). Once the outcome of a game is known, the game becomes meaningless. And the incorporation of chance into the game helps delay the moment when the outcome will become obvious.

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 Life itself is full of randomness and the inexplicable, and it is no small wonder that children and adults alike incorporate chance into their daily lives, as if to tame it. Games of chance are one of the four fundamental categories of games that all humans play, according to the French cultural historian Roger Caillois. Whereas ''agon'' are competitive games dependent upon skill, ''mimicry,'' games of imagination, and ''ilinx'' are games causing disorder and loss of control, ''alea'' are games of chance. Craps, roulette, the lottery -- these are games with unpredictable outcomes. Taken from the Latin name for dice games, ''alea'' "negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications" (17). All is said to depend on luck. There are no assignable causes.
-In his ''Arcades Project'' on 19th century Paris, Walter Benjamin devotes an entire section to dice games and gambling, a curious assemblage of notes and extracts with sources ranging from Casanova to Friedrich Engels. "Gambling," Benjamin quotes Anatole France as saying, "is a hand-to-hand encounter with Fate" (498 [O4A]). Every spin of the roulette wheel is an opportunity to show that fate smiles upon the player. Fortunes rise and fall in the blink of an eye, the roll of the die, or the cut of the cards. Every gambler knows this, accepts it, and even relishes it.
+In his ''Arcades Project'' on nineteenth-century Paris, Walter Benjamin devotes an entire section to dice games and gambling, a curious assemblage of notes and extracts with sources ranging from Casanova to Friedrich Engels. "Gambling," Benjamin quotes Anatole France as saying, "is a hand-to-hand encounter with Fate" (498 [O4A]). Every spin of the roulette wheel is an opportunity to show that fate smiles upon the player. Fortunes rise and fall in the blink of an eye, the roll of the die, or the cut of the cards. Every gambler knows this, accepts it, and even relishes it.
 The allure of gambling -- and more generally, the allure of chance in all games -- lies in the role of uncertainty. Uncertainty is so compelling that even otherwise skill-based games usually incorporate formal elements of chance, such as the coin toss at the beginning of a football game. As Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman put it, uncertainty "is a key component of meaningful play" (174). Once the outcome of a game is known, the game becomes meaningless. And the incorporation of chance into the game helps delay the moment when the outcome will become obvious.