Img_8176
Grandmaster Maurice Ashley made a reference last week at Saatchi & Saatchi's 7x7 event about the world-changing game between Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue back in May of 1997.

It was world-changing, but not in the way the majority of chess players all collectively feared it would be.

Many thought it signaled the end of an age old institution, that some critical part of humanity was now gone forever forever on that day.

In actuality, what's happened has been quite the opposite.

Smarter and faster and more intelligent chess machines have led to even smarter/faster/more intelligent human chess players. Human players have been able to iterate within better games and iterate faster, make mistakes faster, and develop more advanced perspectives faster.

The idea here (and part of the idea behind cyborg anthropology) is that there's no actual separation between humans and machines - in the sense that 'cyborg' is human influencing/being influenced by machine, we are already cyborgs.

Nothing too profound, but just another thought on why I'm not too keen on doomsday scenarios. 

[As a relevant and timely aside: myself and Danielle Strle have begun working on the collaborative project 131//97; stay tuned on the tumblr site as it develops]