The McDonaldization of Chess
By Prof.Olimpiu Urcan
Published in "Correspondence Chess News"
Recently, I rediscovered an old picture from my childhood in some kindergarten from Communist Romania. It shows myself holding a MacDonald puppet in my arms and, fact that makes me smile now, I remember quite well that from the very moment I found that unusual puppet among the other regular toys, I had never let it go until I quit that kindergarten. Had my pictures taken with it, had lunch with it, played soccer with it and so on... Somehow I knew it was special for me in some way. Don't presume you could have found an American toy in a Communist country so easy... These days I was watching Discovery Channel with a documentary about the Cold War's psychological fears and saw touching images of some kindergarten kids having their play
interrupted by alarm training exercises in the extreme event of a nuclear attack. They were all running for cover, dropping their Mickey Mouse toys on the floor. When they used to train us for fire-crisis situations, I never forgot to save my McDonald friend too...
For chess lovers today a computer with a great database substitutes my McDonald toy. I believe that new things attract us so much that we are dependent of the idea of new in everything we perform. We are looking for the newest mobile service, for the newest fashion idea coming from Italy, for the
ultimate news about clones, for the latest computers and, to use only a last example from many others, for chess innovations. We are burned by the desire to see what is new in some very popular lines and we are reading magazines from Canada to Indonesia looking out for innovations, new ideas and new top players. Our informational society prescribes us recipes for progressing quickly, forcing us to take a trip into the future while putting our past behind us for good. It eliminates the need for a rear-view mirror. We need not look
back during this kind of trip.
On the basis of a sociological research and my experience as a historian, the following thesis will be set forth and pleaded - that our Worldwide chess society is living the danger of locking up the contemporary chess in some Weberian inspired "iron cage" that threatens our whole society. In developing my line of argumentation I will use the sociologic theoretical scheme developed by George Ritzer back at the beginning of the 90s. He developed the concept of the "McDonaldization of the society" claiming that we are witnessing a new rationalized model reincarnated in the fast food society. It can become a
system to control us using efficiency, calculability, predictability, and substitution of non-Human for Human technology, trapping us down into a cold cage that spreads its model Worldwide.
Paraphrasing Ritzer who rhetorically asked where is the good old fashion in cooking into an era dominated by Big Mac, in a similar manner, I must ask where is the good old chess into an era where everybody has a laptop for playing chess at high level? I claim that taking our trip into the future without
repairing our broken rear-view mirror spells disaster. It represents our past, our identity and the classical formula "Gens Una Sumus" has no meaning otherwise. Why you might ask? Because this motto does not imply just a horizontal fraternity of chess loving people from all over the World, but also a
vertical (and temporal) solidarity in the sense of a fraternization with the chess historical legacy and with a chess assumed mission. Taking a look at the present chess society I would love to see a wonderful World, as Louis
Armstrong wanted it to be. Still I cannot watch with a happy heart kids growing in the front of the computer screens no matter how "deep" they are.
Anand said it right! "If you are not a grandmaster at 14 you can forget about it!". However I think that more important before becoming a grandmaster is to understand what a grandmaster used to represent in an age when human skills were at work and not some very sophisticated machine that makes the rational process instead of us. The return to the classics must be imperative news today, but not only by collecting their games in our databases. We have to rediscover their stories and historical context in such a manner to have them serve as models for our chess loving pupils. Well, you must excuse me if I see in a 13 years old that can play as good as Kasparov only by using a chess electronic device rather a non-human type than the human spirit at its heights.
The chess computer has become a popular tool as ATMs, credit cards, mobile devices and other electronic popular gadgets. Automatic cash machines, supermarket scanners and new automated airplanes do the job previously preformed by a human. Indeed, bureaucracy is no longer the model for rationalization studied by Weber and others. The big or small screens do everything instead of us, or they guide us with some military type formulas such as "Insert now" "Type that" "Check again" and so on. If back in the 19th or 20th century we could see some very fine gentlemen playing a chess game while the spectators were witnessing their game firsthand, trying to understand their subtle maneuvers while drinking a fine glass of whisky, today we can see a high level tournament with big electronic tables narrating the hidden story of the game for us while we are serving popcorns like at the theatre. We are watching a predictable movie by participating to a big chess tournament.
No mystery around this game any more... Using such machines in making our job easier it is affecting our creativity. Today, more than ever, you can hear grandmasters saying with sadness in their voice "Well, my recollection of the variation proved to be insufficient..." concluding a defeat. We all love the show, tasting every second of it when Deep Thought obliged Kasparov to resign. We cannot stop from using our computers to analyze where we went wrong in our games, forgetting about old magazines, old chess players and old chess battles, in short about the lessons of old chess.
Telemarketing, voice mails, zip codes, screen everywhere, high-speed chess computers... Well, it sounds like Orwell`s 1984 to me! Electronic chess devices are recommended for their speed in calculation, for their efficiency and for making us believe in an accurate opinion about what can happen on the board. Like a fast food electronic preparation system, they could tell us what a good job they can do in just 30 seconds! Why do we need that? Well, because in a rational society people want to know what to expect under any conditions and at all times. They want the sandwich they just ordered to be exactly like the one from yesterday and if they won with a King's Indian line last round, they intend to use it again due to their belief that things cannot be much different if previously proven efficient... The routine use of sequels is present all over, from Hollywood to World chess title matches. From the studios or organizing institutions point of view the same characters, actors
(remember Karpov-Kasparov matches?) and basic plots lines can be used all over again. Profit levels are more predictable this way. People do not go camping for the sake of the nature any more. They want all the unpredictability to be taken out. "We've got everything right here... It does not matter how hard it rains or how hard the wind blows" would say a camper relaxing in his air-conditioned thirty-foot trailer. In the same manner in which a kid confessed he likes to be in the mall all the time because no matter what weather is outside, it is always the same in here. Similarly, using a chess computer to make our chess agenda. We do it because we want to eliminate any undesired events that could obliterate our objective. We become shaky when we are not using it, wishing its permanent position as companion in our thinking process.
I humbly ask the reader not to consider this essay a piece of anti-progress propaganda. This is far from being my intention. Great gains have resulted following technological innovations. There is a danger in rationalization nevertheless. There is the irrationality of the rationality, no doubt about it. The
rational systems inevitably spawn a series of irrationalities that limit and defeat their rationality. We have long lines in McDonald's restaurants, ATMs as tools of the rational society utilizing us as unpaid workers and they still give us hard
times every now and then! How many chess grandmasters lost some of their games by blindly following their chess program's recommendations?
Pushing a button, the kitchen may end up as a sort of filling station. Family members will pull in, push a few buttons, fill up and leave. To clean up, all we need is to throw away plastic plates. Is this a normal family dinner nowadays? But of course! I am only 25 years old, but I love the old fashion way. I am
not very much impressed with a long and very beautiful chess game played by e-mail by two engineers using extensively their computers from work! I would rather prefer an old game, where subtle moves are mixed with weak manoeuvres, played in some European chess saloon from the beginning of the 20th century, as well as I love to prepare a special dinner for my fiancé and
not order pizza-delivery, or a microwave dish! And I would rather prefer Havana's hot temperature if this means I can avoid an opponent that refuses to create and replies to my moves with his chess engine loaded on a laptop...
We are living the danger of creating the chess bureaucrat by neglecting the human side of the chess phenomenon and by putting our historical legacy behind us. TV commercials for chess electronic sets and worldwide chains of chess shops are the signs of a new chess industry seeking great profit. However as any other industry it has a worker inside of it, a chess worker. What about a chess revolution by returning to our legacy that, first of all, is human? I am no man of action believe me. I call the plumber when my sink doesn't work. So, I call the chess historians to repair the rear-view mirror I
mentioned above. Because it is the only mirror worth keeping as chess lovers!
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I dedicate this writing to my sweet Juli Angsani who's inspiring presence deserves all my gratitude!
Let`s never stop praying!
© 2002 Olimpiu Urcan