"Advanced Chess" and Cognitive Augmentation

Gary Kasparov, infamous for his 1980's matches with Deep Blue, IBM's chess machine, has designed a *new* way to play chess while simultaneously using a computer chess program. "Each player had a PC at hand running the chess software of his choice during the game. The idea was to create the highest level of chess ever played, a synthesis of the best of man and machine." Is this taking chess to "the highest level"? Or is it destroying the game? Read more in his New York Review of Books article.

Humans are only Humans if they are Bionic Humans

National Geographic's feature article provides a nice overview of the present state of adaptive technologies. The graphic presentation is really cool. The eye surgery video is simply shocking, and shows, to my mind, that retinal implants are the fastest area of progress in the last five years.

The article's overall claim that humans are "better off" with this technology, is a bit tame, to say the least, particularly in contrast with William Cornwell's view that we can only be human with this technology. For more on this see Cornwell's paper, "Human Nature Unbound" and come out for his talk at the Cipher workshop, January 19th.