On the Impact of Information Technologies on Society: an Historical Perspective through the Game of Chess

Abstract

The game of chess as always been viewed as an iconic representationof intellectual prowess. Since the very beginning of computerscience, the challenge of being able to program a computer capableof playing chess and beating humans has been alive and used both asa mark to measure hardware/software progresses and as an ongoingprogramming challenge leading to numerous discoveries. In the earlydays of computer science it was a topic for specialists. But ascomputers were democratized, and the strength of chess enginesbegan to increase, chess players started to appropriate tothemselves these new tools. We show how these interactions betweenthe world of chess and information technologies have been herald ofbroader social impacts of information technologies. The game ofchess, and more broadly the world of chess (chess players,literature, computer softwares and websites dedicated to chess,etc.), turns out to be a surprisingly and particularly sharpindicator of the changes induced in our everyday life by theinformation technologies. Moreover, in the same way that chess is amodelization of war that captures the raw features of strategicthinking, chess world can be seen as small society making the studyof the information technologies impact easier to analyze and tograsp.