ABSTRACT
This VDU obsession exposes something deep-rooted in us: a motive to be in control of events. There are many other VDU ‘gamblers’, not only those in amusement arcades, and they seem to play rather than work at their screen. The TV screen, too, evokes in people all over the world a passive visual fascination, regardless of the content of the message being transmitted (Postman, 1986). Moreover, this addictive effect appears not only in the trivial use of electronics. Just as striking to the unbiased observer is the utter absorption of computer programmers, systems analysts and various other types of designers with screen and keyboard, behaving much like compulsive gamblers in their ‘quest for certainty’, who get a noradrenalin kick out of hitting the buttons.
