Niche Knowledge

I found a new way to waste time—a computer game called “Reversi.” This is an Internet-based version of the game “Othello,” which is actually a very old board game that predates the computer by hundreds of years. To play Othello, opponents place either white or black pieces called “stones” on a square board containing sixty-four spaces. When placing a stone on the playing field, all of your opponent’s stones in a line between your colored stones change colors and become yours. As pieces are sequentially played, the number of black or white stones changes back and forth. Eventually, once all the spaces are filled, the one who has the most stones wins.

Othello is deceptively easy. You can learn how to play in about five minutes. Unlike a standard video game, there is no virtual world with thousands of different rules and conditions. In Othello, each playing piece can only do one thing, unlike chess where you have to remember the peculiar movement of the horse, or even checkers where the pieces can move, jump, or be regally promoted if they survive that long. Othello, with its dearth of rules and low-tech approach, was my kind of game. The book, “Othello for Dummies” would be very short, you would think.

But if you thought that, you would be wrong. Apparently Othello is very complex. Playing the game at an entry-level of skill only exposes the tip of the complexity iceberg. I got a hint of this when the computer asked what ability level I wanted to play at: beginner, intermediate, or expert. Considering that I thought it was a second-grade game at best, I didn’t take the question seriously and selected “expert.” The computer searched the world and found a series of advanced players from China and the Far East. These players truly were advanced because they proceeded to clean my clock.

After playing a bit more, I learned that there is a lot of strategy in Othello, with many different combinations of plays involving good and bad sequences. As I played and continued to burn otherwise productive hours, I started to understand some of the tricks and strategy. I learned certain leadoff methods to avoid getting trapped, for both initiating play and playing second. I learned how to go for the diagonals on the board and not get clumped. I learned a clever squeeze play on the backboard that led to capture of an all-important corner square. I learned another clever maneuver, an end game defensive play used to capture the crucial corner squares after all else had failed.

It occurred to me that Othello for Dummies would have a few more pages than I originally thought. When I looked some more, I found entire Web sites and societies dedicated to Othello. The British Othello foundation has a Web site (http://www.britishothello.org.uk) with guidelines, club meeting dates and locations, a store, and even details about tournaments. It seemed that a talented player could make a living on the professional Othello circuit. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to bend it like Beckham, but as an Othello pro, I could travel from tournament to tournament, rack up the big bucks, maybe snag a few Othello sneaker endorsements, and all the while attract groupies and attention like a movie star or rock god. The ancient game of Othello had spawned a modern self-contained subworld with all the typical trappings of human microsocieties: skill levels, status, riches, fame, and pecking order. Although not as easy to see, there was probably a dark side to this subworld as well, with unspoken gatherings of the broken, the former champions who suffered Othello wrist injuries or lost their minds. One day they were at the head of the Othello pack, but then fate took a nasty turn and they suffered a reversi.

The blossoming of Othello society is yet another symptom of the explosion of knowledge of everything. In our computer-enabled society, where analysis, data storage. and management capabilities have been magnified by a factor of 16 trillion, no area of life is too simple or too remote to avoid being made more complex. There is a niche of knowledge for everything, along with societies and expertise to administer the niches.

I was hoping to play a simple game with limited strategy. I didn’t want to think so much. I just wanted to place my stones on the board, win a few, lose a few less. That the game was more complicated led to stress. I needed a break. For relief, I decided to go for a bike ride. It was a bit cool, so I put on layers of low-tech gray sweats and started off on my treasured low-tech road bike. A few months ago, my technological friend had given me a present of a speedometer/odometer/weather forecaster/garage door opener device that I had attached to the handle bar. Unfortunately, the device could not do any of these functions, at least not yet, because there were many more parts to assemble. There was some sort of complex installation procedure where I had to attach the radio connection to the spoke, or something like that. I never completed the installation, but I did have a useless but fancy-looking monitor attached to the handlebar.

It was a beautiful, cool fall day with puffy gray fair-weather clouds and a deep blue sky. I pedaled into town, content for a lazy ride on my usual route around the lake. But it was not to be. That morning, the “A” Team bikers had assembled in the town square. Unlike us “B” team riders, with our low-fashion attire and Walmart bikes, the “A” team had taken biking to a whole new level. They envisioned themselves as riders in the Tour de France, if not in the lead peloton, then at least in the support staff. Members of the A-team did not dress in layers of floppy gray sweats. They wore stylish, butt-hugging spandex outfits emblazoned with logos and announcements. A-teamers had sleek, aerodynamic helmets and special riding gloves. Their bikes were not from Walmart or any other mart, but had special, hybrid composite material, lightweight, high-strength frames that actually had negative weight. These special machines, which cost multiple thousands of dollars, were so light that they had to be tethered to the ground when not being ridden, lest they float away like helium-filled balloons.

I tried to slouch by the A-team congregation, but they saw me. I was friends with several members in real life and they shamed me into joining their posse. Unlike the pleasant jaunt I had planned, I was off on a furious full speed race, featuring something called “drafting” where different bikers took turns in the lead, like the head goose in an airborne V-formation. When I rode with my B-team friends, with our motley assembly of clothes and bikes, we would chat, lazily pedal, and then meet for an elaborate buffet where we undid many of the benefits of the previous exercise. But the A-team did not chat. They pedaled furiously for tens of miles in studied silence, in a rush of cold air as birds struggled to avoid getting trampled in their path. Afterward, when the rims and spokes finally cooled, coffee was permitted but not a luxurious buffet.

My technological friend rode with the B-team but he had A-team pretensions. He had what seemed like dozens of devices on his handlebars. He proudly wore butt-hugging spandex, and had special bike shoes that attached themselves to the pedals. He had two bikes, a “comfort” bike with fatter tires, and a sleek, composite material roadster with microthin tires. My technological friend explained to me the subworld of biking. For example, there was a proper way to train. Pedaling was to be done not all at once, but by switching gears in a certain sequence like Lance Armstrong (he knew this because he read the book). There was special biking food, and a biking store that sold the special food, the attachments, and the butt-hugging accessories. One time when we were pedaling together, I was peacefully plodding in high gear. My technological friend explained how I was doing it all wrong, and how I could advance if I changed gears and followed the proper sequence. I smiled politely and spit off to the other side.

What was it going to take to de-complicate? Could we return to a simpler, less complex time, without all of the subworlds, overflow of knowledge, and spandex? We are all faced with this challenge: How deep do we want to go? Today, every endeavor is like an onion, with infinite layers hiding the core of ultimate knowledge at the center. It’s like that episode of the original Star Trek series (actually, if you’re a nerd of a certain age, everything is like an episode of the original Star Trek series). In the onion episode, the Starship Enterprise gets caught in a black vortex of non-space, which turns out to be caused by a giant, energy-sucking paramecium. At the center of the blackness is the paramecium. At the center of that is the nucleus, which Mr. Spock destroys with the shuttlecraft. So the lesson was that there are always layers upon layers of knowledge, until you get to the center, and then you have to blow it up with the shuttlecraft. I longed for the good old days without onions when life was simple.

So after the bike ride I did some editing. I had a stack of articles and papers to go through. I thought I would turn the PC on for a few minutes and race through the stack, but it was not to be. Unfortunately none of the writers knew how to write. They got it all wrong. Their clauses were clueless. Their punctuation chopped up sentences incorrectly. They used semi-colons in desperation, when they couldn’t think of words to connect their sentence fragments. It was a massacre instead of a mastering of the English language.

If only these people had taken a little more time. Clearly they were interested, having taken pen to paper and fingers to keyboard. They wanted to write. They just hadn’t bothered to learn the details.