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

TL;DR

This paper explores how the evolution of chess and its community reflects broader societal impacts of information technologies, illustrating technological progress and social change through the lens of chess history and culture.

Contribution

It presents a historical perspective on the relationship between information technologies and society, using chess as a model to analyze social and technological transformations.

Findings

Chess evolution mirrors technological progress in AI and computing.

The chess community reflects societal changes driven by information technology.

Chess serves as a microcosm for studying strategic thinking and social dynamics.

Abstract

The game of chess as always been viewed as an iconic representation of intellectual prowess. Since the very beginning of computer science, the challenge of being able to program a computer capable of playing chess and beating humans has been alive and used both as a mark to measure hardware/software progresses and as an ongoing programming challenge leading to numerous discoveries. In the early days of computer science it was a topic for specialists. But as computers were democratized, and the strength of chess engines began to increase, chess players started to appropriate to themselves these new tools. We show how these interactions between the world of chess and information technologies have been herald of broader social impacts of information technologies. The game of chess, 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 sharp indicator of the changes induced in our everyday life by the information technologies. Moreover, in the same way that chess is a modelization of war that captures the raw features of strategic thinking, chess world can be seen as small society making the study of the information technologies impact easier to analyze and to grasp.