[MD] wired review- rise of the cyborg

[John Carl]

This month's wired features a bit of to-do on the Apple I-Pad, and tablet
computing in general changing the human computer interface.  A fascinating
subject in our household as Lu has one pre-ordered and delivery promised on
the 3rd of April, and counting down.  She's even been
blogging<http://bypryordesign.blogspot.com/>about it, which is a
first.

But more interesting than a new toy was another article in the Wired, by
Clive Thompson about the time Big Blue beat Kasparov and he (Kasparov)
suggested a sorta cyborgian chess tournament, where machine/human teams
would compete with one another.

The winners of the tournament  were not the one with the most massive
computing power, nor was it the chess grandmaster of highest ratings.  The
winners were a couple of twenty-something amateurs using PCs and off the
shelf software.

What gave them the upper hand?  They were especially skilled at leveraging
the computer's assistance.  They knew better how to enter moves, when to
consult the software, and when to ignore its advice.

As Kasparov later put it, a weak human with a machine can be better than a
strong human with a machine if the weak human has a better process.

Thompson makes some conclusions about the difference between the kind of
people who feel harried by technological advances and those who have
optimized their process - who know how and when to rely on machine
intelligence.