In an article entitled "As We May Think", published in 1945, Vanevar Bush described a machine of the future that he named "The Memex." The Memex was described as a desk with levers and a screens that would allow the user to create "trails" of information that could be retrieved and annotated. The internet can be described as a similar device.

The game of chess forms a mesh of positions where the user can traverse either forwards or backwards as the game is played or replayed. The first move of the chess game chooses a start of a path from the labyrinth of positions. Chess games are often annotated by masters of the game. In the game of chess, these positions can be thought of as linked together by the moves that transform one position into another. The body of knowledge of chess moves and positions is an encyclopedia that is always being added to so that future generations can benefit from the thoughts of the previous masters.

Tufte showed that layering of information allows complicated information to be understood by the viewer. In chess, there are many layers of information. Each piece is a member of the layer of all similar pieces. The second move of our trail is a pawn move. The pawns are one of the largest layers on the chess board. The squares on the board are always two different colors. The pieces are always separated into two different colors. The bishops are often thought of in terms of what color squares they are allowed to move on.

Itten identified a variety of color contrasts that helped draw people's attention. Contrasts allow for conveying a variety of emotions and ideas. In chess, the board and the pieces are often designed with colors that have a high contrast of hue or value. The third move of our trail chosen from the labyrinth is a white piece. The white pieces and the black pieces exhibit a contrast of value.

A grid structure is often used as a guide for layout that helps the viewer understand the information. Meggs described how the grid can be used in this manner. In the game of chess, the board itself is broken up into a grid which has subgrids. For example, the board can be cut in half down the middle horizontally where one side is considered the territory of one player and the other side is the territory of the other. The board is also often times cut down the middle vertically where one side is considered the king side and one side is considered the queen side. The board is also described as rows of squares that are referred to as either ranks or files depending on if they are horizontal rows or vertical rows. The fourth move of our trail chosen from the labyrinth moves a member of the knight layer from black's queenside subgrid.

Duchamp used a toilet as an expression of the idea that an ordinary object can be presented out of context to give it a new meaning. He created a new piece of art in the form of a fountain that used the toilet as the centerpiece. The fifth move of our trail is a member of the bishop layer. A Bishop is a religous figure which has been placed on the chessboard out of context. Chess can be fashioned out of ordinary objects. In 1945 Duchamp and others hatched the idea of inviting artists to reinvent and comment upon the classic chess set. John Cage designed a chess board for the exhibit. Duchamp was a chess enthusiast and designed a pocket chess set in 1943. Chess sets have been fashioned out of salt and pepper shakers, soda cans and perfume bottles.

A surrogate is an object that stands for another object and allows us to access it. In chess, the games are recorded as a series of moves from one position to another. Recorded games from history can be accessed, replayed, studied and discussed. Tournaments of the masters are recorded into complete books of study. I personally have games recorded from when I was a teenager. It is possible to find almost any game played by chess masters on the internet.

Hyperreal is defined as a "generation by models of a real without origin or reality." This conveys the idea that a representation of a world can be a reflection of the real world but not necessarily hold true to all aspects of that reality. Chess has infiltrated itself into many different aspects of our lives as a concept for intelligence and tactics. Sports announcers routinely and proudly state that the sporting event they are commentating is a "chess match" out there.

Chess is often portrayed in movies and commercials to give an intellectual slant to the subject or person. Chess has even been used as a plotline in movies. In the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" chess is used as a metaphore for sexual foreplay. When Gary Kasparov took on Deep Blue in 1997 to prove that humans were still the chess champions of the world and lost, chess became a symbol of man's inevitable fall from superiority in intelligence.

Hypertext evokes the idea of being able to traverse information using conceptual links between nodes of the information. The user can jump from one idea to another using the linking system. The game of chess has many positions of interest that can be jumped to in a non-linear fashion, or set up a random position to study. Positions are represented in books, newspapers, magazines and on the internet. The trail that we have chosen is called the "Ruy Lopez" opening which is named after a spanish priest who discovered it in the 15th century.

Jump to any of the previous positions:

Borges - Labrynth
Bush - The Memex
Tufte - Layering
Itten - Color Contrasts
Meggs - The Grid
Duchamp - Found Object
Surrogate
Baudrillard - Hyperreality

After WWII, Vanevar Bush published some papers explaining how there is too much information and describing a machine to deal with this problem. This machine he described is called "The Memex." It functions much like the internet does today except information was arranged by association. The path a user took formed a trail.

The most obvious example today of The Memex is the internet. The internet in some ways tries to solve to problem of distributing information, but the frequent lack of proper design tends to make many web pages add to the problem rather than subtract from it.