26 | October | 2006 | David G. Schwartz

Card Player on Roll The Bones, G2E Event

I’m happier posting my reviews of other people’s books here (see the previous entry) than linking to reviews of my own work, but Tim Peters’ review of Roll the Bones at Card Player was so on-target that I can’t resist. Here’s a sample:

To what seems to be the majority of today’s poker players – the 20-somethings who have cut their teeth online – the phrase “back in the day” might easily refer to Chris Moneymaker, the first online qualifier to win the main event, back in 2003. Or, if they have a keen sense of poker history, they might think “old school” means Stu “The Kid” Ungar, who won his first World Series of Poker main event in 1980. But poker’s real history dates back at least 500 years – and gambling in general “is simply older than history,” writes David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (where else?), in this fascinating new book.

Schwartz has traced the roots of gambling back to the earliest forms of civilization. Here’s an early example: In Mesopotamia, some 7,000 years ago, the small hucklebones of sheep and goats (located just above the heel bone) were used to “cast lots,” an essentially religious practice for divination – predicting the future. “When Mesopotamian fortune-tellers filed down their hucklebones and marked them with insignia, they took the first steps towards modern dice,” he writes – hence the origins of “roll the bones,” an expression used by some old-time craps players. But it wouldn’t be too long before people transformed sortilege (the technical term for telling the future by interpreting thrown objects) into a form of gambling, and eventually people realized they could gamble on just about anything, from “rolling the bones” to sports, from lotteries to card games. “At every juncture of history, it seems, the gambler is nearby.”

In fact, Schwartz makes a pretty strong case that the impulse to gamble is a universal one – and that the desire to prohibit the activity is misguided and doomed to fail. Religious leaders have condemned gambling, but bingo accounts for a meaningful contribution to church coffers. Pharaohs, emperors, and kings all formulated laws against it, typically as they raked in gambling-related fees and taxes – not to mention lottery revenues. And with gambling legalized, in some form or another, in most of the United States, recent efforts to criminalize online betting seem particularly hypocritical. Card Player readers following this recent legislation will appreciate Schwartz’s history of gambling suppression; we can only hope that members of Congress and state legislators read the book.
…
When you sit down to play poker, in a cardroom or online, you’re taking part in a drama that spans human history, and Schwartz has written the definitive account of that history in Roll the Bones.
Card Player Magazine – The Inside Straight (scroll down for review)

I don’t think an author can ask for a better review. It’s great to see people who know and love gambling connect with the book like that.

On a related note, I’ve just scheduled a book event at the Global Gaming Expo. For those of you who don’t know, this is the world’s biggest gaming conference and exhibition. If you are in the business, you should definitely be there.

Here are the event details:

WHAT: Reading from Roll the Bones, followed by discussion and signing
WHERE: Las Vegas Convention Center, Room N110
WHEN: Tuesday, November 14, 1:30 PM

We should have books on hand, but if you’d like to get a copy before, visit your favorite bookseller, either online or in person.

If you can’t make that event but want to get a copy signed, I’ve got good news: the Center for Gaming Research will have an exhibit called “50 Years of Dining on the Las Vegas Strip” next to the registration area. When I’m not walking the floor, in session (I’m speaking on a marketing panel on Weds. at 3:15), or having a cheesesteak down at Las Vegas Subs in the Hilton, that’s where I’ll be.

If you haven’t already done so, you can still register for G2E here.

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Book Review: Made to Break

Giles Slade. Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Giles Slade opens this monograph with a flurry of astounding facts: in 2004, 315 million working PCs were thrown out in North America alone, and in the following year over 100 million cell phones joined them on the trashheap. That’s tons of electronic equipment–larded with non-biogradable components and toxic waste–filling up garbage dumps around the world.

What drives this rush to trash? According to Slade, it obsolescence, rather than failure. Your last computer likely didn’t wear out–you junked it because a faster, lighter, and spiffier one came out.

Since the Great Depression, it’s been clear that consumption, rather than production, drives the economy. With America getting more efficient at producing goods, it follows that, to precent another economic downturn, someone has to convince people to buy more goods.

Slade traces the roots of “repetitive consumption back to the beginnings of branding and packaging in the middle of the 19th century. Over time, the American ethic of thrift collapsed before social pressures to buy new, rather than save the old. The first several chapters nicely sketch the cultural changes–and their underlying economic drivers–that created the annual model change. Similarly, producers began obliquely discussing “planned obsolescene.” This could mean, in the case of automobiles, that the customer would decide on his own to buy a more up-to-date car in the latest model, or, in some cases, that internal components unable to be replaced would fail after a set lifespan. “Death dating” products was a controversial practice, but many in various industries (particularly consumer electronics) supported it.

The author is at his best when he is talking about the pivotal players–such as GM’s Alfred Sloan and RCA’s David Sarnoff–and the modern development of planned obsolescence. He also deftly handles the transition from mechanical obsolescence to psychological obsolescence–the thing that makes some people buy a new car every two years, despite the fact that their old one still works fine. Advertising and marketing efforts convinced the public that, in almost every case, newer was better. Slade uncovers just how our disposable goods, from razors to Razrs, came to be.

The book veers slightly in a chapter on “Weaponizing Obsolescence,” which details a compex scheme under which American counter-espionage agents allowed the Soviets to “steal” plans for technology that was designed to fail. While it’s a compelling story–you can easily see that this is a screenplay in the making–it takes the book a little off course, and might have been better as a standlone article or book in its own right. Also, there might have been more discussion of another force driving disposable electronics: rising wages and lower costs of finished goods. The parts needed to repair your broken DVD player are probably not expensive, but buying an hour of a trained mechanic’s time to repair it is likely more than the original cost. Therefore, it makes more sense to throw it out and buy anew than to get it fixed. Surely, that’s got just as much to do with the rise of disposabiltiy as clever marketing.

All in all, this is a good book that raises many troubling questions, particuarly this one: what are we going to do with all of our “obsolete” trash? I recommend it for anyone who’s interested in the history of technology, the economy, or consumer electronics.

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