Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 11:20:46 06/07/01
Go up one level in this thread
On June 06, 2001 at 21:27:48, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>Chris:
>Yes, of course, some info too, but the degree of it depends of the issue, the
>importance it has, etc. Clearly Burgess does not think computer chess deserves
>some much attention and care with technical aspects of any kind more than that
>he offered. Besides he must think in what readers want to read. The journalist
>is not writting for an specific public, but for a mass public where all kind of
>expertisse or lack of it pay the cent to get the newspaper. Average reader gives
> a shit about chess computers and so if you ever are going to interest him about
>something of this field, it will be trough the sort of thing Burgess wrote. I
>would consider Burgess not a talented man, as clearly he is, but a pedant and an
>idiot if he ever was going to write about hash tables to that public.
I wouldn't be surprised that you assume, as I am deep into the technical areas
of computer chess, that I am blaming the journalist for not giving technical
details such as processor, hash tables, search algorithms, and so on...
But it's not the case.
Listen, when I participate in human tournaments here, with Chess Tiger for Palm
for example, I have to face a hundred times per day the same basic questions. In
this case I'm able to answer to the people without saying any technical word.
You can say a lot of interesting things without boring the readers with
technical words.
You could for example answer the most basic questions people ask over and over
again.
Here is the most frequently asked question I have to answer 20 times a day when
my program makes a public appearance: "so you have programmed all the possible
chess positions into your computer?".
I also believe that the general audience is not computer-illiterate any more,
and a few explanation related to what people already know cannot hurt. For
example the guy could have said that this Fritz was much more powerful than a PC
because it was using a computer which is composed of 8 PCs working together.
>In fact, that's the kind of mistakes beginners journalist makes: they try to
>"teach"; they try to deliver too much. So they bore everybody but himself and
>two geeks.
I think another basic mistake is to disgust the audience from a topic. That's
what this article does. The bottom line is: "computers are unbeatable at chess,
so who cares about this game anymore".
It would have been more constructive to mention that while the computer programs
are strong when they run on fast computers, they still have some major
weaknesses. And that on slow computers they are not that strong.
I guess this is too technical?
>So a last point: journalism is not about writting about what you really know,
>but to write to people that does not know and have no reasons to know. So you
>give them the little drop you can and you have.
>What else?
Give some accurate informations maybe?
Christophe
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