Online Poker's Outlaw Status (2 of 2)

My friend Vera Valmore was telling me why politicians -- hell, most Americans -- couldn’t be expected to get behind online poker any time soon.

“You’ve got a Congress full of reps and senators who aren’t necessarily anti-poker, right?” she asked.

“Or even anti-gambling. Even Bill Frist -- the one who engineered the deal in the dead of night to get this UIGEA through Congress -- received nearly $20,000 from Harrah’s Entertainment in his last campaign. One of his biggest contributors, actually . . . ”

“Okay, okay . . . more whining we don’t need,” Vera interrupted. “A politician proves himself a hypocrite. Big news. What I mean is you have a lot of congressmen and women who aren’t necessarily opposed to people getting together and playing poker with each other, whether it be in a casino or in their homes.”

“True,” I answered. “More than a few of them play poker themselves, apparently. But as I was saying, poker’s so-called ‘outlaw status’ makes it hard . . . ”

“Right, right . . . you covered that. But poker -- live poker -- is nevertheless tolerated, correct?”

“More than that. It’s practically venerated.”

“Yet politicians -- and, for that matter, a lot of voters, probably -- would certainly oppose any legislation that sought to ban poker outright, correct?”

“I’d think so.” I wasn’t completely sure where Vera was heading.

“The problem is we’re talking about something people are doing online, over the internet. The big bad internet, where lurk all sorts of evils like child predators, pornography, money-launderers, viruses, scammers, spammers . . . ”

“So?”

“So . . . it isn’t the ‘outlaw status’ of poker that’s the problem here. It is the ‘outlaw status’ of the internet that’s going to prevent politicians -- or a lot of voters -- from getting behind online poker. Or anything else online . . . for a good while, anyhow.”

I thought for a moment about what Vera was saying. She exhaled, obviously growing impatient with my apparent slow-wittedness.

“About a dozen years ago a fellow named Sven Birkerts wrote a book called The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Birkerts is a book reviewer, an academic -- someone fairly invested in print culture and literature. The title of the book gives you an idea what it is about. He’s referring there to Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. He makes a lot of interesting points about electronic media and communications eclipsing print. Birkerts’s book ends up being a kind of lengthy requiem over the death of the book.”

“I see.”

“Anyhow, the book is a series of essays -- I recommend it. He’s ahead of his time, of course. The Gutenberg Elegies was published in 1994, well before the internet had become such an integral part of many people’s lives. The book ends with a fairly chilling ‘Coda’ in which he talks about how we’ve made a ‘Faustian pact’ with technology and there’s no turning back. He talks about how technology is making us ‘shallower’ as a species, how it encourages ‘the erosion of human presence’ . . . .”

“The internet is making us less human,” I offered.

“Exactly. Well, he isn’t speaking specifically of the internet, but he might as well be. Birkerts ends up personifying such technology as the devil himself -- he seduces us with a ‘sales pitch’ about ‘a brighter, easier future,’ but in reality he’s taking our souls away.”

“Sounds like something that bishop in New York said a while back, warning that technology would ‘ultimately devour us’ or something . . . ”

“The internet is ‘Creating a society without a soul’ was what he said. Archbishop David Hope. He also described the process as ‘wizardry.’”

“Ah.”

“So we have an academic and a bishop sharing a similar view about the evil, soul-devouring internet,” said Vera. I was starting to see her point. “And a lot of other people agree with them.”

“For instance, people who don’t use the internet on a regular basis.”

“Such as those who came of age before the last ten or fifteen years. Did you realize the average age of the American voter is around 55? And that 109th Congress, the one that passed the UIGEA . . . the oldest ever, in terms of average age. The senators on average are around 60 years old, the House members around 55.”

I sat there scratching my head.

“So defending poker might not get you a lot of votes,” I piped up. “But defending the internet gets you even fewer.”

“Congrats,” she nodded, wearing a half-grin that made her look like a teacher who has finally led the student to that place where she could finally let go of his hand. “You figured one out. I guess I’ll keep calling you Shamus.”

I laughed. Then I wondered if she was talking about my name or something else.

Vera went on to explain to me how it will likely be several years -- perhaps even decades -- before a majority of people will be able to view interactions mediated by technology (e.g., those that take place online) as equivalent to so-called “real life” interactions (e.g., those that occur face-to-face). All of which is to say, when it comes to online poker’s “outlaw status,” you might say it suffers from not one but two prejudices.

Talk about playing with a short stack.

Still, as long as we have chips, I think the game is still worth playing.