A Caution on Computers, Luck, and Children

In what is sure to be a jam-packed near-seven minutes, I will quickly explain how games are time machines for human identity, why this is important, and how our current fixation on data-driven outcomes for kids kills an important part of humanity in them as well as in our culture. Core to this argument will be an understanding of Callois’ “alea,” (or chance) (1961) and how deterministic computational models can remove this core aspect of self-determination. Traditionally, Americans have ironically preferred cultures of control to cultures of chance, banning gambling and touting a meritocratic ideal that hard work pays off even as fundamental components of our economy thrive on chance. I will argue that current attempts to computationally track, assess, and predict our kids are ideologically driven and fundamentally at war with something at the core of why games and gaming are important to us as humans, and that the GLS Community is in a key position to push back.