Containment and Virtualization
Slot Technology and the Remaking of the Casino Industry
Kah-Wee Lee. “Containment and Virtualization: Slot Technology and the Remaking of the Casino Industry,” Occasional Paper Series 14. Las Vegas: Center for Gaming Research, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012.
ABSTRACT: This paper examines how the casino industry was transformed by slot technology between 1950 and 1990. The criminalization of slot machines in the 1950s led to a massive evacuation of slot machines into Las Vegas casinos. In this concentrated environment, slot technology revealed to casino operators an automated surveillance technology that could disassemble the player into streams of virtual data, not through any overt means, but through the very activity of play itself. Slot managers and gaming technologists found themselves empowered professionally as they experimented with ways to transform data into profits. From the 1970s to the 90s, this technological development effectively linked up every economic activity in various casinos across the US, creating a virtual network that defeated the geographical injunctions designed to segregate gambling from other spheres of life.
©2012 Center for Gaming Research • University Libraries • University of Nevada, Las Vegas
http://gaming.unlv.edu/papers/cgr_op14_lee.pdf
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