Going Off The Book
A few weeks ago I was listening to a RadioLab podcast about Games. In this episode, hosts Robert Krulwich and Jad Abamrod spoke to Brian Christian, an author who recounted the story of the checkers craze of the 60s that culminated in the World Checkers Championship in 1963. Apparently. this championship was a series of 40 games between the world's two top players. All 40 games ended in a draw. 21 of those 40 games were the exact same.
"Checkers had gotten to the point where there was a perfect game of checkers," Brian said as he discussed how the top players memorized previous games and knew the ideal countermove for the other player's moves. "This was rock bottom for the checkers community."
The name for this knowing of all the games, all the moves, is The Book.
Brian continues on the podcast to say that the same thing happens in chess, and that there is an equivalent book (actually a computer program called "Fritz" these ays) of every chess game played by grandmasters for the past few hundred years. Although there are way, way more variations, there are occasions where two grandmasters will play the exact same game that has been played years before. Nowadays, the first 20 moves or so in major chess games are totally by The Book: the two players playing moves that they've memorized, just like their checkers predecessors.
To chess enthusiasts, the most exciting part (and true brilliance) is when players go off The Book: that moment when they make a move that hasn't been done before in the history of recorded chess.
When I first started my career 5 years ago, there were no best practices for social media. There were no case studies. Everything was new. Everything we did was off the book.
Now it seems that everyone is staying on the book. Facebook brand pages are almost cookie-cutter copies of each other. Pitch emails to bloggers feel about as personal and special as a Hallmark card.
I still think there is a ton of opportunity to go off the book. I just worry that we're too concerned with playing that perfect game.
The feeds are alive with a story about how a swarm of drones completely surrounded a power station in the area, then disappeared. The comments are full of the usual speculation: China, terrorists, aliens, our own government. New start-up. Rogue AI. Non-rogue AI.
People talk about how something happened two years ago at a different power plant, a nuclear one. Snopes covered it, they say. It's in Wikipedia, and it's referred to as "The Delta incident" or something like that. They usually have anti-drone jammers in place, but these ones got around it somehow.
Local police are referring to regional law enforcement who are referring to government officials who are giving reassurance shrouding non-answers. With no damage, no viral photos, no lasting impact the story loses momentum. Niche enthusiasts and situation trackers continue to discuss it in forums and long, fading threads.
The headlines are gone, but the information lingers. A background hum amongst a growing buzz of other worries.
The news stories keep coming in. None of them are directly connected, but it feels like they sit along the same trend line:
A disaster at a Chinese-owned mine in Central Africa. One of those places where the CCP has gone in and traded mineral rights in exchange for developing mass infrastructure: Airports, highways, hospitals, government buildings, water treatment plants. More than 100 people missing or dead. All of them Chinese nationals. It's not until a few days later that the CBTO - The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization - announces that they have detected the presence of radioactive particles in line with a large-scale nuclear failure at the location. Chinese officials say it’s a power plant. Non-affiliated African nations in the region say that their continent is being used for the production and storage of nuclear weapons.
Researchers working on a joint project between MIT, Pfizer, and a small company that has since been acquired by Lockheed-Martin announces in a series of YouTube videos that they have grown and cultivated human brain and skin cells in something slightly more sophisticated than a petri dish, and connected it to electrodes which in turn are connected to circuitry. The circuits are connected to light, heat, and a saline and sugar solution that drips into the dish. The effect is that the mass of cells is able to choose when it wants energy and food. It can control its environment.
PETA, The Vatican, and various other institutions claiming to represent ethical interests all issue statements.
Comments are closed on the YouTube video and emails sent to the organization go without a reply.
The latest iOS update contains a section of code causes iPhone batteries to overheat, effectively destroying the phone. Worse than that, prior to activating that set of instructions it transmits the same code to phones running on older version of iOS by exploiting a vulnerability in Airdrop. More than 20% of the world's mobile devices are suddenly offline. And even more people power down their devices out of fear of the same thing happening to them.
The three leading theories are that he's in hiding, he's had a stroke, or he's dead.
Nothing else explains the series of obviously-AI, obviously-fake videos that have been released. Every single one of them has the artefacts of generative AI, every new video has those artefacts fixed only for new ones to get noticed.
The proof of life just feels more like proof of something, if not death.
On top of the uncertainty is the quality of the videos. The cracks in the simulation shouldn't be there if there were actual resources and experts in charge. It would be flawless.
It's hard to know what's worse: That the people in control have such terrible technology that we can tell. Or that they just don't care to make it better, that we all know there is nothing we can do about it.
We just simply accept it as part of the current reality. A world leader that we've all just decided to agree doesn't exist.
Afterwards, we'll call it The Event and we'll know it was an Electro-Magnetic Pulse.
But at first, nobody really made a big deal out of it.
The internet's down, cellphones aren't connecting, power is intermittent.
Local coffee shops hang signs in their window that say "Cash only."
Some of the buses are running. The ones that still rely on fuel are, the electric ones aren't. Traffic seems both lighter and heavier. There are fewer cars on the road, but those that are there are moving slowly. Every intersection is like a four-way stop and people are fortunately playing nicely with each other.
It's around mid-morning that people really start to panic. They realize it isn't a local event, and it's not short-term.
A group of people in the neighbourhood, in neighbourhoods everywhere, gets out some acoustic guitars and bongo drums. Or a violin and an upright bass. Or something like that, and just plays. People stop, and watch. If it's early afternoon, they might stand with a beer and gather together to enjoy the music while they know something bigger
By mid afternoon the internet is back. Cell phone networks are still off and on, depending on which provider or phone model you've got.
Your friend FaceTimes to tell you that he's stuck at the airport. Audio works, the video is laggy.
Airplanes are grounded. Flights cancelled.
Travellers are stranded.
The news starts as a ripple, then explodes as the social media hive mind senses this is more than just one place.