DATELINE–Equitable Center, Midtown Manhattan

Behind all the fanfare and hoopla surrounding world chess champion Gary Kasparov’s melodramatic defeat to the “Deep Blue” computer lurks a secret story too sordid for the culture critics and technologists to publicly acknowledge. True, Kasparov was beaten fair and square by a machine on Sunday, May 12, 1997… but the machine that beat him was not simply a computer by the name of Deep Blue.

“I’m a human being. When I see something that is well beyond my understanding, I’m afraid.”

Kasparov was right to be afraid. The IBM RS/6000 SP computer system, known as Deep Blue, is not only capable of playing against any grandmaster–it can also dispense a powerful electrical shock to its opponents. IBM’s decision to equip Deep Blue with a circuit capable of delivering 50,000 volts of raw electricity provoked only a momentary nod of confusion from chess officials who reasoned the workings of such an advanced electronic device as Deep Blue were beyond their limited, human comprehension.

After playing against Deep Blue on six separate occasions, Kasparov’s nervous system must have been as fried as a Kentucky chicken wing. According to Monday’s New York Times, Kasparov, humiliated and anguished, said: “I have no idea what’s happening behind the curtain.” After the final match, a close advisor to Kasparov told the press that he felt it was highly unlikely that Kasparov would have fared any better had he seen the portable generator humming gently alongside the twin, six-foot computer towers that comprise Deep Blue.

The use of electricity as an agonistic tool is not a new development. For over a decade now, United States police officers, correctional officers and even judges have been equipped with remote control electro-shock devices capable of rendering a human target instantly unconscious and leaving the stunned victims collapsed in a pool of their own vomit, feces and urine. In fact, the use of “stun belts” and “stun guns” is now so popular in the American justice system that the U.S. firms which produce these weapons of torture have begun to export them to such prisoner-friendly nations as Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

What does represent a significant development in the world of technology, however, is IBM’s decision to introduce electro-shock into the computing environment. Kasparov’s humiliating defeat marked the first public use of strategic electro-shock at the hands of a disembodied computer “opponent,” but it wiIl not be the last. According to market analysts, in today’s economic climate of downsizing, flat wages, and general job insecurity, providing computer system administrators with the power to literally shock their users may be the next step in increased productivity and decreased labor activity.

For years, corporate managers have sought a cure-all for the perennial demands of a human, all-too-human workforce and, in most cases, they have succeeded only in reducing their workers into a pliable mass. Previous breakthrough’s include the right to lay-off employees for quasi-official reasons and the ability to discrimate against entire sectors of the employable population based on an applicant’s age, language and formal educational background. Nonetheless, IBM’s shining performance in the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match lights the path of docile repression which is still ahead of us all.

As torture-ready business applications vie with artificial intelligence software for first place in the race to bring humanity to its knees, America’s prison population is already a step ahead of the competition. Now that chain gangs and high-tech torture devices have been redeemed as civilized courtesy of a media culture literally sold on vigilantism, it is only a matter of time before the distinction between prisoner and captor, guilty and innocent, winner and loser, machine and man is finally blurred for all of eternity.

Long live efficiency!