2nd Half Of The Chessboard
2nd Half Of The Chessboard
,There are several versions of the story of the 2nd half of the chessboard. The following is the one being told today. There was a King who was so enamored with the game of chess that had been recently introduced to the King’s court by the game’s inventor that the King wanted to reward the inventor of the game. He asked the inventor of the game what he wanted as a reward for inventing and sharing such a wonderful and intriguing game.
The inventor stated that he was a humble man and all he wanted was the equivalent of one grain of rice on the first space of the chessboard and then double it to two on the second space and then double that to 4 until getting to the last space on the chessboard was reached (Space 64). The King counted the first four spaces and thought this was a very small reward for such a wonderful game. He looked at the inventor and his court and stated “So it shall be done”.
The King and the members of his court did not understand the power of exponential growth. Once you get to the 12th space, you have 2048 grains of rice. Once you reach the 32nd space you are at 2.1 billion grains of rice which is equivalent to a large field of rice. Still not an overwhelming amount but once you cross into the 2nd 1/2 of the chessboard (spaces 33 – 64) then the exponential growth is staggering.
When you reach the 40th space you have 550 billion grains of rice. Now the King and his court are taking notice. Once you reach the 64th space (last space) you have 18 Quintillion (18 million trillion) grains of rice. Sebastian Wohlrapp in his article on this same subject stated the following: “ At ten grains of rice per square inch, this requires rice fields covering twice the surface area of the Earth, oceans included”.
American Computer Scientist, Inventor, Author & Futurist, Ray Kurzweil, is credited with making this phrase popular to show the power of the Moore’s law process. Kurzweil did so in his thought provoking book written in 1999, “The Age Of Spiritual Machines”. I initially became familiar with this phrase in 2012 after listening to a TEDx Boston talk by Andrew McAffee, Research Scientist at M.I.T. and co-author of “The Second Machine Age”.
In a nutshell, Kurzweil and McAffee show how we entered the 2nd half of the chessboard somewhere around 2006. Technology is growing exponentially. We now have multiple technologies growing unbelievably at the same time; Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrency, Stablecoins, Decentralized Finance, NFT’s, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, Biotechnology, Stem Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Robotics, Metaverse, Tokenization of Assets, Internet of Things, 3D Printing, Self-Driving Cars, Augmented Reality, Language Processing, Flying Cars, Electric Cars and more. The question of immense concern to all of us is, “How do we position ourselves as we move further into the 2nd 1/2 of the chessboard?”
Rod Barbee – Founder
NOTE: Go to our “Blockchain Insight Section” on this site and view the video by M.I.T. Research Scientist, Andy McAfee, on The 2nd 1/2 of the Chessboard.