Garry Kasparov, Through the Internet

"It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over the word--if this is the world at all, you know..."

--Alice, in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

By a 13-point margin, voters across the internet opted for the Sicilian defense earlier this week in an online match against Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The contest, which Microsoft grandiosely bills "Kasparov vs. the World," began Monday in New York when Kasparov moved a giant Pawn to E4 on a 400 square-foot chessboard in Bryant Park. Back in cyberspace the World, aided by a panel of chess champions hired by Microsoft, had 24 hours to respond. The Microsoft Network, which is hosting the match, did not say how many people voted in the first round, though the company said it expected hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of participants as the game continues.

This isn't the first time Kasparov, widely believed to be the best chess player in the world, has taken on such a challenge. In 1996 and 1997, he played two six-game matches against and IBM supercomputer named Deep Blue, losing the second time around for the first time in his professional career. Millions of people followed that match on the internet, including thousands of people like me who had no idea (and still have no idea) what a "Sicilian defense" is, but were nonetheless captivated by the man vs. machine theme and the dramatic juxtaposition of such breathtaking technology with such an ancient game.

Predictably, the Deep Blue match spawned a Luddite reaction, and much talk in hushed and ominous tones on television about the clash between man and his creation. Indeed, that is how the match was packaged: a millennial showdown, a parable of the dominant role computers have come to play in society our collective anxiety about technology exploited.

Kasparov's latest venture seems tamer. He will probably win this match with ease, if for no other reason than because too many chess ignoramuses like me will vote. Even in the case of an upset, though, his invisible opponents are safely human and no one will discern any apocalyptic meaning from the result.

Still, Kasparov's new online adventure touches an even deeper and more immediate anxiety we have--or should have--about computers and the Internet. (Vague techno-paranoia, after all, has a limited appeal; someone pointed out at the time of Kasparov's loss that humans have been losing races to their own invention--the bicycle--for some time now without disastrous consequences). How is the internet changing the way we interact with one other?

The Internet is still in its infancy, but it is gaining more users every day and, in many respects, it is already changing society, just as other media have changed society. As the Internet continues to grow--when every school is wired to the Web, as so many politicians promise, and when everyone has an e-mail address from the postal service--how will society change, and will it be for the better?

The Internet is a different world; it is not quite real, it is "virtual." The first thing you notice through this looking glass is that everything is prefixed by an "e"--e-mail, e-commerce, e-dating--and the rules of the real world, from social Norms in chat rooms to the laws of capitalization in e-mail, don't apply.

More importantly, for Internet addicts, fantasy is liberated from reality on the Web, even if only for a little while. In the anonymity of cyberspace, people can play out their fantasies, make up new identities as easily as making up new screen-names. The Pawn can imagine herself a Queen, and no one knows the difference.

This escape from reality (like a more traditional favorite, drugs) can cause problems back in the real world. For six percent of Internet users, according to a study of 18000 users last year, the Web is a plug-in hallucinogen, a refuge from reality and an addiction. The psychological symptoms of this addiction, according to the study, include loneliness, low self-esteem and depression.

Those are the extreme cases, but even for the majority of users who don't qualify as addicts, the social effects of the parallel Internet universe are starting to emerge: e-mail is replacing conversation, e-trade is replacing interaction with real people in real stores. I don't mean to overstate the effect of the Internet, and I'm not sure I believe e-commerce will ever put the real thing out of business. Still, the trend away from "real," face-to-face interaction is unmistakable.

But what about the chess game? It seems harmless enough, and maybe it is. Yet like Kasparov's battle with Deep Blue, "Kasparov vs. the World" is a particularly dramatic demonstration of how technology is capable of changing society.

Chess, even for novices, is essentially a social game and has been for the millennia humans have played it. People play chess in front of Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square on warm summer nights as much for the company as for the game itself. Indeed, for the vast majority of chess players worldwide who don't play professionally, chess' social dynamic is the game's purpose.

Can chess on the Internet fill the same role? For that matter, can e-commerce replace the corner bookstore without a net loss to the community? The answer is no: By turning to the Internet for things we once filled through human interaction, we are losing something as a society, a little bit of the glue that holds us together.

The worst way to tackle the problem would be to blame the technology itself. But the way that technology is put to use does deserve a more critical look, and not the unabashed enthusiasm everything e-related receives now. Before we rush to wire every classroom to the Internet, before we give our business to amazon.com instead of the local book store, before we pack our bags and bid au revoir to the real world, we eventually need to decide whether the cost of the convenience, in terms of human interaction, might be too great.

Alan E. Wirzbicki '01, an unemployed history and literature concentrator in Eliot House, is associate editorial chair of The Crimson.