The Zen Master and the Chess Game

Now that I have a computer it's hard to imagine life without it.  But my wife had to use all her powers of persusion to get me to buy one.  "What will we use it for?" was my plaintive cry.

The answer, I now realise, can be summed up in two words.  The Internet.

As it gets harder and harder to imagine life without the world wide web, many people are increasingly concerned that spending so much time in front of our computer screens is bad for us.

Are we losing the art of face-to-face communication?  Are we superficially surfing from one thing to another with no depth to our thoughts?  How can we use the Internet, and especially social networking tools effectively, without becoming disconnected from reality?

From 30 April - 3 May there is a conference taking place in Silicon Valley which aims to address these issues. The Web 2.0 Summit features an impressive array of speakers from Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as Zen teachers, neuroscientists and academics.

The Wisdom 2.0 conference is a one-of-a-kind event...to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.

The great challenge of our age is not only to live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world. The conference was developed to explore this and related issues. If you are interested in the potential of technology, and wish to use it wisely, you may enjoy the the Wisdom 2.0 conference.

And what has this got to do with chess?  Well, nothing directly, but I happened to find out about this conference through a parable called The Tale of the Zen Master and the Chess game, which is well worth a read.