<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">On a larger note, both games and microworlds in AI can be usefully seen as instances of the larger Cold War “closed world” discourse that Paul Edwards writes about in <i class="">The Closed World</i><span style="font-style: normal;" class="">. </span><div class=""><div class="csl-bib-body" style="line-height: 1.35; margin-left: 2em; text-indent:-2em;">
<div class="csl-entry">Edwards, Paul N. <i class="">The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America</i>. Inside Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. </div><div class="csl-entry"><br class=""></div><div class="csl-entry">Wargaming and scenarios and operations research are all wrapped up together in this and was a particular concern of the military-industrial-academic complex and thus not surprising that MIT is a major area where it appears.</div><div class="csl-entry">RAND Corporation was also a center of this kind of thinking, and that’s where Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, and Cliff Shaw were when they created the Logic Theory Machine. Prior to that they had also developed a chess program that made use of heuristics.</div><div class="csl-entry">It could probably be argued that games are just one instance of microworlds or perhaps predated the idea but became a paradigm case of microworlds as that notion was developed. I’m eager to see what you discover!</div>
<span class="Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=urn%3Aisbn%3AISBN%3A%20026205051X%20(alk.%20paper)%3B%209780262050517%20(alk.%20paper)%20LCCN%3A%2095-24674&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=The%20Closed%20World%3A%20Computers%20and%20the%20Politics%20of%20Discourse%20in%20Cold%20War%20America&rft.place=Cambridge%2C%20Mass.&rft.publisher=MIT%20Press&rft.series=Inside%20Technology&rft.aufirst=Paul%20N.&rft.aulast=Edwards&rft.au=Paul%20N.%20Edwards&rft.date=1996&rft.tpages=xx%2C%20440%20p.&rft.isbn=ISBN%3A%20026205051X%20(alk.%20paper)%3B%209780262050517%20(alk.%20paper)%20LCCN%3A%2095-24674"></span></div><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Mar 31, 2021, at 12:49 PM, Hansen Hsu <<a href="mailto:hansnhsu@gmail.com" class="">hansnhsu@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Javier,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I think there probably is a significant relationship between AI research on games and microworlds.</div><div class="">For microworlds, I’d look into the blocks world research that was done at MIT, particularly that of Terry Winograd.</div><div class="">MIT was also where Spacewar! was created by Steve Russell, and there was also significant early chess research done there by a group led by Alan Kotok, student of John McCarthy, and later by Richard Greenblatt.</div><div class="">Both ideas are in the air among MIT’s CS researchers in the 1960s, so there has to be some connection.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have a couple of blog posts on AI in chess and Go up at the Computer History Museum blog:</div><div class=""><a href="https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-1-how-games-have-driven-two-schools-of-ai-research/" class="">https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-1-how-games-have-driven-two-schools-of-ai-research/</a></div><div class=""><a href="https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-2-go-and-deep-learning/" class="">https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-2-go-and-deep-learning/</a></div><div class="">The content itself may not be as useful to you as the links to various other resources in our collection, including videos of our oral histories and events related to chess, including oral histories of Kotok and Greenblatt.</div><div class="">These also have links to our online chess exhibit, which itself has links to some items and video clips in our collection on chess.</div><div class=""><a href="https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/" class="">https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You can search our collection here:</div><div class=""><a href="https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/" class="">https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Critical AI researcher Phil Agre’s book</div><div class=""><div class="csl-bib-body" style="line-height: 1.35; margin-left: 2em; text-indent:-2em;">
<div class="csl-entry">Agre, Philip E. <i class="">Computation and Human Experience</i>. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.</div><div class="csl-entry">makes an explicit connection between microworlds and games as he uses the microworld of the videogame Pengi to test an AI to play the game.</div><div class="csl-entry">This is a bit later than the 1960s though.</div><div class="csl-entry"><br class=""></div>
<span class="Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=urn%3Aisbn%3A978-0-521-38432-2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Computation%20and%20Human%20Experience&rft.place=Cambridge%20%3B%20New%20York&rft.publisher=Cambridge%20University%20Press&rft.aufirst=Philip%20E.&rft.aulast=Agre&rft.au=Philip%20E.%20Agre&rft.date=1997&rft.isbn=978-0-521-38432-2"></span></div><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Mar 31, 2021, at 10:41 AM, Javier Poveda F <<a href="mailto:jpovedaf@gmail.com" class="">jpovedaf@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Dear all,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My name is Javier Ramiro Poveda Figueroa, PhD candidate in history of science at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. I am interested in the study of history and philosophy of computing from the 1930s until the 1990s. I am researching in the relationship between early computing games like chess and checkers with microworlds. For that reason, I am searching literature that can help me to understand whether microworlds and early computing games have are related or not. I would like to know if you have any information about the problem I am working with. Your help will be valuable.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Kind regards,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Javier Poveda Figueroa.</div></div>
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