On Numbers and the Gamification of Media

In our contemporary culture, media of all kinds resort to numbers as the authoritative language to create data sets, analyse information and measure progress. The pursuit of measurable success is emphasised, with hard work being touted as the only path to achieving it. We can understand this through societal standards of success, which try to ensure that happiness is an objective measure and it exists someplace far in the future, promised only to those who work hard enough to achieve it.

While this culture of control persists, the world of chance and luck also thrives as casinos and online gambling platforms entice us with the allure of being able to strike it rich by getting lucky, even if the odds are often stacked against us.

These two dichotomous worlds are happening in parallel: the culture of control and the culture of chance.  The former emphasizes the power of luck, fortune, and grace, while the latter emphasizes rationality and predictability. Numbers of the medium which mediates them both. 

The allure of gambling and the culture of chance is rooted in human fascination with the apparent randomness and unpredictability of the universe. Gambling, in some ways, represents an attempt to impose order and predictability onto a chaotic system, by calculating odds and tracking wins and losses. The ability to predict and control the outcome of chance events, no matter how small, provides a sense of mastery and control in a world that often feels uncertain. In this sense, gambling could be considered the gamification of the universe itself. What humans perceive as randomness in the universe is turned into a structured event where we can measure the odds of a dice roll, roulette ball rolling into place or the odds of getting dealt the perfect poker hand. 

Through the lens, we can see how all media