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Originally published at Internet.comDesign as a Contact Sport
My first exposure to the Association for Computing Machinery was back in the early 70s, at one of the early computer chess tournaments. There was an infectious enthusiasm for both computers and programming at the event. Computers weren't so commonplace back then, and there was a nerdish camaraderie among the attendees.
There were also significant differences among them. There were two large castes: the computer scientists and the engineers. At the computer chess tournament, the engineers were consumed with the competition. Their goal was to come up with the best performing mix of hardware and software. They wanted to win.
The computer scientists had a different agenda. They were more interested in the software issues. Originally, the theory had been that by experimenting with chess programs we would learn more about thinking in general. Chess was merely a vehicle for exploring artificial intelligence issues. But all the discussions of trees and search strategies - although useful in future software design - did pitifully little to advance our understanding of either human or machine cognition.
There were also a few civilians at the tourney. As an avid chess player, my favorite attendees were dignitaries from the chess community. I remember Isaac Kashdan, the gentlemanly chess editor for the Los Angeles Times, and how he seemed bemused by the competition. His hope was that machines would eventually become good enough that they could serve as study aids for master chess players. Years before it would become popular, Kashdan was thinking of computers as most of us do today - as a consumer...
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