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What do Sandra Bullock and Gary Kasparov have in common?
Published in Aug '97
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A few days after the cloning incident, President Clinton issued a terse warning to the world about the terrible consequences it could have on humanity's ability to safely enjoy a plate of lamb chops. I'm just kidding. But the point is that while such things came to the attention of the so called leader of the free world, it surprised me to see how clearly the 'Deep Blue' incident went unnoticed by the same guy who only a few months ago, was rewiring schools, and urging students to master the internet. Even Newsweek columnist Steven Levy must have missed the irony when he drew historical parallels with the IBM vs Kasparov event and the Apollo moon landing, the Lindbergh flight and Alexander Graham Bell's breakthrough in telephony. Excuse me, but since when was the defeat of the human spirit something to be proud of? I don't grudge the fact that for a small group of IBM engineers, this must have been their moment of triumph that secured their Christmas bonuses, but even though Gary Kasparov is an arrogant, unpredictable, and emotionally weak example of humanity, he was the guy I was rooting for. Weren't you? (If you work for IBM corporation or East West enterprises, this question does not apply to you). He was the home team, even though all the appliances around my home were cheering the other way. Both in the real and virtual world, this is the encounter that we -- and here I mean those of us who still haven't learned to programme the VCR--- hoped we would win, hands down. For a brief moment we were actually having a lead. Take the way people exploit Answering machines. You may not want to believe this, but 35% of pet owners surveyed in the US, claimed to use their answering machine to talk to their dogs or cats while they were away on vacation! Or take Cyberspace. To me the Net is nothing else but the triumph of man over his mechanical boundaries. The my-modem-can-talk-to -your-modem brag should have greater cheerleaders than the doomsday viruses that can fry up your hard drive. In the movie NET, sexy Sandra Bullock thwarts a bunch of sociopaths who try to use a 'trojan horse' ( a fake program) to destroy the economy of Great Britain. Ninety-five percent of the plot is about the use of the Internet to destroy her and everyone around her by altering her driver's license records, medical history and other documentation. Even in a typical B-movie like this, the bad guys are the ones who use technology to subvert our human identity. Like all good bad-movies, our heroine triumphs, but only after walloping the chief killer with a fire-extinguisher --not a hard drive. But what has all this got to do with Kasparov? Very little on the face of it (no-one wants to see Gary in a bikini, for sure), but when you consider Sandra Bullock's use of an Apple Powerbook, you can't help noticing the metaphor : the personal computer against the main-frame. I'm not talking of logos or brands here, but like the legendary Macintosh commercial thirteen years ago, where a woman throws a sledge-hammer at the image of Big Brother on a giant computer screen, the Kasparov vs Deep Blue face-off is the nineties equivalent of this ongoing saga. Except for the fact that Big Brother, in this case, sent our representative back to the pavilion. In one sense, the competition was pointless. It's bits and bytes against ego and attitude. It's thought that Kasparov would take 360 years to even examine a 3-minute move made by Deep Blue. Yet in a previous round in February last year, Kasparov beat the machine only because he played an unconventional game that 'psyched' it out. So did he 'let the side down' in Round 2? It's not the defeat that worries me.I was more disappointed in how he handled it. Unlike my wife, I don't know a bishop from a rook, but I expected the grand master to put on a better show. My heroes don't blame the umpires. Martina Navratilova didn't bad mouth the Wimbledon organizers when she bowed out. Tiger Woods never complains about the turf. Kasparov apparently underestimated the operating system he was up against. But I have no problem with that. Don't we all underestimate the potential of an operating system? After resigning myself to the fact that Apple had painted itself into a corner, the recent news of its 240 Mega Hertz lightning-fast laptop, rekindled the possibility that this match isn't over - yet. And I still nurse the hope that Kasparov will give Deep Blue a drubbing in the next round. In case that does not happen, I have the perfect alternative scenario in mind -- and I don't mind if BBDO, the Apple Ad Agency, plagiarize my plot-line. Apple signs up Gary Kasparov for a series of TV commercials that are, in fact, real challenges recorded in real-time against an unnamed mainframe. But there is one difference. Kasparov makes his moves on a Macintosh Powerbook. In the first round, there is a tie. In round two Kasparov comes close to losing, then, true to form accuses the competitor of foul play. In round three Kasparov checkmates the super-computer, but --get this -- keeps his mouth shut. End frame : the grand-master holds his trophy in the air, and impulsively, flings it at the huge monitor across the room. Cut. Cheering rises. In an unrelated incident, Bill Clinton announces that the ban on cloning will not be lifted until the year 2000. By then President Al Gore's brain cells will have been successfully cloned out of an IBM processor. And what will that make us? Pawns of the White House, of course! So Gary Kasparov, stop being the grandmaster, and start being human. The fate of the free world depends on you. If you don't believe me, please feel free to rent the Sandra Bullock movie tonight. There's nothing like a good cyberspace conspiracy theory to help you loosen up.
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