Photo: Ozier Muhammad/NYT
From the Dept. of Whatistheworldcomingto: this is the new version of Monopoly, designed by Hasbro to compete with the video games that are stealing their lunch. That tower in the middle, which looks like it belongs in Dubai, is a computer with an infra-red sensor and a speaker that barks instructions at the participants. It keeps track of the money and ensures that players stick to the rules - watching out, for instance, for anyone who foolish enough to advance the wrong number of spaces. If it thinks the game is going too slow, it may intervene to 'make it lively'. This involves electocuting the players (OK I made the last bit up, but only the last bit).
Hasbro's designers clearly have a dystopian imagination. Perhaps they've been reading up on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, the philosopher's influential design for a prison that offered the guards maximum opportunities for surveillance, and that, in the works of Michel Foucault and others, functions as a metaphor for contemporary 'surveillance' society. Or maybe they're just control freaks.
Link to full story.
I am not a silver top hat! I am a human being!
Posted by: Robert David Sullivan | February 16, 2011 at 08:33 PM
Sorry, I am a free man! Who foolishly writes before Googling.
Posted by: Robert David Sullivan | February 16, 2011 at 08:37 PM