Digital Tech On The Go

Is it just coincidence that Google's machines have been learning to play Go and that Amazon has been developing machine shops called Go?

"Five minutes to learn but a lifetime to master" ... Go is a simple yet complex long term strategy game for positional influence and global dominance. It starts with an empty board and players typically establish positions on the periphery to establish formations for potential territory .. it ends when there are no further opportunities for profitable play.

Google's Go playing Artificial Intelligence could be thought of as signals from the future ... first they beat the best humans and continue evolving through a form of competitive darwinian natural selection between themselves ultimately producing strabnge strategy that humans don't understand and at first consider a mistake but then realise is a winning move.

Amazon's Go stores can also be thought of as signals from the future .. a creepy future that bristles with total surveillance and automation.

Look into the shadows under the stones placed by Google and Amazon and we can see the Go board and the game they are playing ... it is still early in the game and they are still playing to establish new positions of influence that can lead to later dominance ... even a tactical loss can lead to strategic advantage. Amazon is connecting the dots with retail while Google is connecting the dots with search - there seems nothing more important to humans than consuming stuff and being able to find it .. they don't call us consumers for nothing.

However, there is hope before we are surrounded. Go is a non-chance, non-cooperative, zero sum game with perfect information and the real world just isn't like this ... its more chaotic and sensitive to chance events and no matter how hard Amazon and Google try to know everything they never will ... there are also more than two players and new players are joining all the time no matter how hard Google might search and destroy them.

Google has long understood extistential threat ... in the early noughties their founders used to talk about technology cycles and how in digital tech IBM and then Microsoft missed key moments and fell behind. Google understands the shortcomings of playing Go and now wants to be the board everyone else plays on. Google's machines are now playing and winning at poker and learning how to decieve us even better and with smart city projects like Sidewalk Amazon will have to build its Go stores on Google street and play on Google's board. And who knows where Google maps will take us.

So, while resistance might seem futile the real world is more complex than even Google can model - and humans are not the simple behavioristic robots that tech capitalists think they can program and control. As long as you have free will you can make a difference despite the tech that binds - the choice is ours.