I love Google, Part N+1

January 05, 2015

I'm enrolled in a colloquy, titled: Examining Public discourse in the Age of Technology. One of the books that we're discussing argues that our public discourse is being dumbed down by the media; that in the old days people listened to debates by articulate individuals that sometimes lasted for hours.This is part of a pattern that I'll call "romanticizing the past." People have things that they hate, paint a picture of a time before that hated thing existed, and claim that the world was so much better then.Sometimes it's true. But more often than not it is not. But that's not what I want to post about. I'll rant on that subject another time. Right now I want to talk about how cool Google is.In response to discussion in the class I was inspired to write a blog post, here, about the way that the past is romanticized. I wanted to refer to a book that I'd read but I could not remember its name. What I did remember was:

  • He'd described the fact that even though computers regularly beat grand masters at chess these days, that humans and chess-playing computers, working in collaboration, beat both the best humans and the best computers, when working alone. These computer-human teams he called "centaurs"

  • He'd described the fact that in the past people were readers, not writers. Once they finished school they did relatively little writing because most jobs were manual labor--in farm and factory. Today people write more than ever before--and even if much of it is short, and trivial, it's still writing. He cited the enormous number of words per day written on Facebook.

So I Googled for "book with centaur playing chess internet facebook"

The first result, was the one I wanted:

  1. Excerpt | Smarter Than You Thinksmarterthanyouthink.net/excerpt/The Rise of the Centaurs. Who's better at chess—computers or humans? ... Together, they would form what chess players later called a centaur: a hybrid beast ... BUY THEBOOK ... Twitter · Facebook · Collision Detection (Clive's blog) ...Missing: internet

Yay Google.And yes, I cheated and backdated this post.