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The Gamification of Life

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Anything that can be measured will become a game. This is one of the more disappointing truths I’ve realized over the years, and one that’s largely inescapable. Martin Heidegger believed that rapid technological progress inevitably leads to a world that is valued for its utility rather than its beauty. For example, we will gaze upon wonder at the majesty of a forest, but will ultimately concede that we need trees to take on a more functional shape: desks to work on, books to flip through, etc. And technology is the force that allows us to take the natural world and transform its constituents into something “useful.” I think Heidegger is mostly right here. I say mostly because the one thing he misinterprets is how exactly we gauge something to be useful. His emphasis was more so on the function of the object in question: how well it solves a problem, how reliable it is, and so forth. But in my opinion, our sense of what’s useful is wholly tied to measurability: how metrics signify the s

The Gamification of Life Archive ↓ Best Posts All Posts Recent Posts Newsletter Book Courses ↓ Thinking In Stories The Examined Writer Reflections The Gamification of Life By Lawrence Yeo Anything that can be measured will become a game. This is one of the more disappointing truths I’ve realized over the years, and one that’s largely inescapable. Martin Heidegger believed that rapid technological progress inevitably leads to a world that is valued for its utility rather than its beauty. For example, we will gaze upon wonder at the majesty of a forest, but will ultimately concede that we need t

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