suppose it happens that you begin to wonder about my motivations. Maybe all I really want to do is beat you. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in changing the rules. | mean, what makes you so sure that I’m that community-minded?

when we turn on our smartphones, that they are there for us to play with, it's more that the possession of one turns you into a nonplayer character. You are now emitting a string of data, about location and activity, with which Apple and Google and Facebook and Samsung and Amazon and all the r est get to play the meta-game. The game that seems to be for us is really for them. They play against each other, with us as the nonplayer charac-ters, the meatbots

If we are novice players, the rules may be writte n on the back of the box the ch ess set came in. Or they migh t be in a book on a bookshelf behind us. Or they might be d isplayed on a computer screen nearby. T he inte rest-in g thing, though, is that unless we are novice p layers the rules w ill no t be consulted during the game. The rules o f chess are written down in millions of locations around t he world, but when you are actually p laying a game of c h ess those physical manifesta tions of the ru les aren' t a part o f t he process. Wh en you are actually playing a gam e of ch ess, the only rules tha t matter are t he rules in your head