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

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

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

12 pages - ISSN: 2105-0422The game of chess has 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 to play chess, and to beat humans, has been alive and has been 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 an affair of specialists. But as computers were democratized, and the strength of chess engines started 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 website dedicated to chess, etc.), turns out to be a surprisingly and particularly sharp indicator of the changes induced in our every day 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 analyse and to grasp

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A comparison of penalty shootout designs in soccer

Penalty shootout in soccer is recognized to be unfair because the team kicking first in all rounds enjoys a significant advantage. The so-called Catch-Up Rule has been suggested recently to solve this problem but is shown here not to be fairer than the simpler deterministic Alternating (ABBA) Rule that has already been tried. We introduce the Adjusted Catch-Up Rule by guaranteeing the first penalty of the possible sudden death stage to the team disadvantaged in the first round. It outperforms the Catch-Up and Alternating Rules, while remains straightforward to implement. A general measure of complexity for penalty shootout mechanisms is also provided as the minimal number of binary questions required to decide the first-mover in a given round without knowing the history of the penalty shootout. This quantification permits a two-dimensional evaluation of any mechanism proposed in the future