Only a few months ago, IBM’s Deep Blue excited and intrigued us as it challenged the chess wizardry of Garry Kasparov. In the late 18th and first half of the 19th Century, humans were similarly ...

Homo faber, man the maker. From the invention of the wheel to the glory and nightmare of today's technology, humans have been artificers. In this role of creator, humanity has both usurped and ...

THE TURK:THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FAMOUS EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHESS-PLAYING MACHINE By Tom Standage Walker and Co., $24, 272 pages, illus. REVIEWED BY DAVID R. SANDS The Turk was a fraud, but it would ...

The Chess Machine is possibly one of the most understatedly weird books I've ever read. Robert Löhr, a German screenwriter, actor, and according to his author description on the back flap occasional ...

One or two hundred years from now, some writer will produce a study of the mania that overcame stock traders in the 1990s, when ignorance of the true capabilities of Internet technology led to wild ...

Gaby Wood, a writer for the Observer in London, is the author of "Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life" (2002, Alfred A. Knopf). Some days ago in New York City, Garry ...

There may never have been a sporting event with such a lopsided group of fans. When Garry Kasparov, considered the greatest chess player of all time, sat down to play a high-stakes tournament on May 3 ...