I’ve used personal computers for work and play since 1982. My first PC was a Kaypro II. The Kaypro was a high-tech marvel back then, and as a bonus, it was (in theory) “transportable.” Sturdy and reliable, it had the user-friendly mobility of a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. I loved that machine. It was text-based only – ghost-white letters glimmering on a tiny dark screen, with no consoling graphics – but it got the job of word processing, formerly known as writing, done.
Alas, love in the technosphere is fleeting. Along came the GUI, the “graphical user interface,” and I switched to Apple and Windows computers. Why, you ask? Isn’t it obvious? My Kaypro’s gray frumpiness, like a paramour who’s suddenly developed warts, couldn’t compete with their sexy young operating systems. All those desperate hours of writer’s block, staring into an empty black screen without a creative thought in my noggin, could now be filled, in a blaze of rainbow color, with Pac-Man.
In the end though, that romance went south as well. One-way relationships always do. The truth finally dawned on me one day, after another disappointing round of (deadline-evading) Monkey Island. I was paying tech companies hefty fees for the use of software I didn’t actually own, couldn’t share, and couldn’t legally hack. Meanwhile, those same companies were not paying me for the personal data they harvested and then redeployed to sell me more software I wouldn’t own, to use on operating systems I didn’t understand, which ran on magic boxes whose guts were a mystery.
So I taught myself Linux instead.
Linux is a free operating system with a vast array of free software. And it runs on any computer. Today, Linux comes with optional GUIs that can make it look nearly identical to a Mac or Windows desktop. But the original, and still the most powerful, way of communicating with a computer running Linux or any other operating system is the CLI, or “command line interface.”
The CLI is to a GUI as Swahili is to English. They’re both a kind of language. And that’s where the family resemblance ends. If your mind goes blank at the mention of a routine CLI command like “sudo dnf config-manager –add-repo
Apple and Microsoft disguise the inner beast. Linux programming lets you peek at it under the hood. The workings of a computer aren’t magic, but they’re also not remotely human. And anyone who imagines that “intelligent machines,” should they ever achieve real consciousness, will be human-like and human-friendly, needs his head examined.
So much for the story above. What’s the lesson? Simply this: Appearances deceive. And not just with computers. The surface of an advanced, tech-suffused culture may gleam with sunny promise. What goes on under its hood is another matter.
Here’s an example. Between half and two-thirds of U.S. adults have gambled, at least occasionally, over the past year. Nearly 8 percent gamble every day. This includes everything from state lotteries and online betting to local casinos. For some, gambling is simple entertainment. For others, it’s a serious problem.
Gambling demographics are revealing. Economic class and education matter, but not in a simplistic way. More income often supports more gambling, but lower-income gamblers suffer much higher real-world risks and damage. And they’re especially vulnerable to manipulative marketing.
From a Catholic perspective, gambling isn’t inherently wrong, so long as it’s fair, moderate, and doesn’t compromise one’s basic needs and responsibilities to others. But in practice, the U.S. gambling industry is organized to produce exactly the opposite results. In 2023, the industry spent more than $730 billion on advertising. In 2025, that figure will exceed $1 trillion. It’s impossible to watch televised sports without a hurricane of high-energy, high-gloss betting ads, hawked by high-profile celebrities, and expertly designed to hook players into an ongoing habit.
That notion of “design” is important. It’s the beast under our current culture’s hood – most obviously in gambling, but by no means limited to it.
In her 2012 book, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, social researcher Natasha Dow Schűll described how today’s casinos use behavioral conditioning techniques to maximize player engagement and drive industry profits. Everything in a modern casino – from floor plan to lighting to slot machines and the sounds they make – is scientifically structured to keep players playing, sometimes until they drop from exhaustion.
One of the women interviewed by Schűll routinely wore a diaper to avoid bathroom breaks that might interfere with her time on a favorite machine. Another woman claimed to be “in control” of her gambling, and the next moment said, “she wished to be a robot, free of self-directed capacities.”
Yet another woman interviewed – Mollie – was hooked on video poker. Schűll writes:
When I ask Mollie if she’s hoping for a big win, she gives a short laugh and a dismissive wave of her hand. “In the beginning there was excitement about winning,” she says, “but the more I gambled, the wiser I got about my chances. Wiser, but also weaker, less able to stop. Today when I win – and I do win from time to time – I just put it back in the machines. The thing that people never understand is that I’m not playing to win.” Why then does she play? “To keep playing – to stay in that machine zone where nothing else matters. . . .[T]he whole world is spinning around you, and you can’t really hear anything. You’ aren’t really there – you’re with the machine, and that’s all you’re with.”
There are days now when casinos seem to model everyday American life. We’ve created a nation of unparalleled blessings, grinding appetites, and addictions; and a profound confusion about what it really means to be “free.” But we’ve had the answer all along. It’s in that book we Christians claim to believe. Start with John 8:32; then read 14:6 as a chaser.
