Editor’s Letter

Ever since first fashioning a spear, humans have used tools to suborn the world to their will. We’ve come a long way since the wheel and in this post-industrial world of apps and AI, the machines now seem poised to take over us. The game of Go may not be quite as old as the wheel (despite some certain fantastic claims), but has certainly evolved along similar lines. Where once masters understood only a few quarks of its complexity, our grasp of Go has since advanced to atomic levels. Meanwhile, machines—namely, AlphaGo, an advanced AI built in Google’s laboratories—have learned to straddle the infinity of Go’s universe. At the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, TWOC watched China’s top players compete, determined to best, or at least understand, AlphaGo’s dazzling progress. That epic battle, and its full ramifications, are laid bared in this month’s equally epic cover story—along with battle between bots, the brave tale of Beijing’s “nail neighborhood,” a handsome history of ham, how a California city became the Chinese Beverly Hills, and of course, much more

Robert Foyle HunwickManaging Editor