  The game of chess as always been viewed as an iconic representation of
intellectual prowess. Since the very beginning of computer science, the
challenge of being able to program a computer capable of playing chess and
beating humans has been alive and used both as a mark to measure
hardware/software progresses and as an ongoing programming challenge leading to
numerous discoveries. In the early days of computer science it was a topic for
specialists. But as computers were democratized, and the strength of chess
engines began to increase, chess players started to appropriate to themselves
these new tools. We show how these interactions between the world of chess and
information technologies have been herald of broader social impacts of
information technologies. The game of chess, and more broadly the world of
chess (chess players, literature, computer softwares and websites dedicated to
chess, etc.), turns out to be a surprisingly and particularly sharp indicator
of the changes induced in our everyday life by the information technologies.
Moreover, in the same way that chess is a modelization of war that captures the
raw features of strategic thinking, chess world can be seen as small society
making the study of the information technologies impact easier to analyze and
to grasp.
