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Hello, this is Beyond Today from Radio 4 with me, Tina Dehely. Today, a conversation with James Brydall.

Now James Brydall wants us to think about technology in a different way.

He's a computer scientist, he's an artist and he's an author.

His book, A New Dark Age is a slightly foreboding look at

where we're headed with what he calls computational thinking or the ways computers

think. He argues that as the tech around us gets more complex,

our understanding of it diminishes. And that despite having access now to tons of

information, we are living in a new dark age.

James Bridal might not be a household name or at least not in every household,

but his work addresses a lot of the themes we talk about

here on beyond today and on a Friday as you know we often like to take a step

back from the news and hear from someone we're interested in. James lives in

Greece but was back in the country this week so we

decided to grab him for a chat about the ideas in his book and to talk to him about

whether the future really is as bleak as he makes out. Let's go back to 1997, Gary Kasparov,

and tell me about him and how machine intelligence has transformed since then?

Yes, this is kind of one of my favorite stories where

there's this extraordinary moment in 97 where we have this man versus machine matched

Kasparov versus IBM's deep blue, this machine that was built pretty much expressly

to beat him personally.

Playing chess.

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