Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Sign of the Times - Using Technology to Cheat

Cheating at chess is making more headlines. Today CNET, a site that covers technology news reports the following:

Checkmate for Indian chess player after phone ploy "Caught using his mobile phone's wireless device to win games, player is banned from competition for 10 years."

I'm not sure there will be anyway to stop this now that computers can beat the world champion. The possibilities for relaying computer moves to a player whether electronically or through some other means (pre-arranged codes or signals) may make competitive chess events impossible to hold.

As much as I embrace technology, there are times when I long for the good old days when chess expertise was a skill and talent possessed only by human beings and not machines.