By Francis X. Maier
I’ve used personal computers for work and play since 1982. My first PC was a Kaypro II. The Kaypro was a technological marvel back then and, as a bonus, was (in theory) “portable”. Rugged and reliable, it had the friendly mobility of a portable anti-tank missile. I loved that machine. It was text-only—ghostly white letters glowing on a tiny dark screen, without reassuring graphics—but it got the job done for word processing, formerly known as writing.
Ah, love in the technosphere is fleeting. The GUI arrived, the “graphical user interface”, and I switched to Apple and Windows computers. Why?, you ask. Isn’t it obvious? The shabby gray of my Kaypro, like a lover who suddenly develops warts, couldn’t compete with their sexy young operating systems. All those desperate hours of creative block, staring at an empty black screen without a single idea, could now be filled, in a rainbow explosion of color, with Pac-Man.
In the end, however, that romance fell apart too. One-sided relationships always end that way. The truth hit me one day, after another disappointing round of Monkey Island (specialty in delaying deadlines). I was paying tech companies high fees to use software that wasn’t mine, that I couldn’t share, and that I couldn’t legally modify. Meanwhile, those same companies weren’t paying me for the personal data they collected and reused to sell me more software that I wouldn’t own, destined for operating systems I didn’t understand, running on magic boxes whose internal gears were a mystery.
So I taught myself Linux.
Linux is a free operating system with a huge variety of free software. And it runs on any computer. Today, Linux offers optional GUIs that can make it look almost identical to a Mac or Windows desktop. But the original, and still more powerful, way to communicate with a computer using Linux or any other system is the CLI, or “command line interface”.
The CLI is to a GUI what Swahili is to English. Both are a type of language. And that’s where the family resemblance ends. If your mind goes blank upon hearing a routine CLI command like “sudo dnf config-manager –add-repo <repository_url>”, you’re probably human. But a computer, grinding infinite zeros and ones with inhuman mechanics, understands it with relentless precision.
Apple and Microsoft hide the inner beast. Programming in Linux lets you peek under the hood. The workings of a computer aren’t magic, but they’re not remotely human either. And anyone who imagines that “intelligent machines,” if they ever achieve true consciousness, will be human-like and friendly, needs to have their head examined.
So much for the story. The lesson? Simply this: appearances deceive. And not just with computers. The surface of an advanced, technology-saturated culture can shine with sunny promises. What happens under its hood is another matter.
Here’s an example. Between half and two-thirds of American adults have gambled—at least occasionally—over the past year. Nearly 8% 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.
The demographics of gambling are revealing. Economic class and education matter, but not in a simplistic way. Higher incomes usually allow for more gambling, but low-income gamblers suffer much greater real-life risks and harms. And they are especially vulnerable to manipulative marketing.
From a Catholic perspective, gambling isn’t inherently bad, as long as it’s fair, moderate, and doesn’t compromise basic needs or responsibilities to others. But in practice, the American gambling industry is organized to produce exactly the opposite results. In 2023, the industry spent more than 730 billion dollars on advertising. In 2025, that figure will exceed a trillion dollars. It’s impossible to watch televised sports without a hurricane of high-energy, high-gloss betting ads, promoted by high-profile celebrities and precision-designed to hook gamblers into a continuous habit.
That notion of “design” is important. It’s the beast under the hood of our current culture—most evident in gambling, but far from limited to it—.
In her 2012 book, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, social researcher Natasha Dow Schüll described how modern casinos use behavioral conditioning techniques to maximize player engagement and increase profits. Everything in a modern casino—from the floor plan to the lighting, through the slot machines and the sounds they make—is scientifically structured to keep players playing, sometimes until they collapse from exhaustion.
One of the women interviewed by Schüll used to wear diapers to avoid bathroom breaks that interrupted her time at her favorite machine. Another woman claimed to be “in control” of her gambling, and in the next instant said she “wished she were a robot, free of self-directing capacities”.
Another interviewee—Mollie—was hooked on video poker. Schüll writes:
When I ask Mollie if she expects a big win, she lets out a small laugh and waves her hand dismissively. “There was excitement about winning at first,” she says, “but the more I played, the more aware I became of my odds. More aware, but also weaker, less able to stop. Today, when I win—and I win occasionally—I just put it right back into the machines. What people never understand is that I don’t gamble to win.” So why does she gamble? “To keep gambling—to stay in that machine zone where nothing else matters… [E]verything spins around you, and you really can’t hear anything. You’re not really there—you’re with the machine, and only with the machine.”
There are days when casinos seem like a model of everyday American life. We’ve created a nation of unprecedented blessings, relentless appetites, and addictions; and a deep confusion about what it really means to be “free”. But we’ve always had the answer. It’s in that book that Christians claim to believe. It starts with John 8:32; then read 14:6 as accompaniment.
About the author
Francis X. Maier is a senior research fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.