Today there is e-mail and videoconferencing, and for bridge players there is also the chance to play electronically.
Traditionally, go is played with 181 black and 180 white go-ishi (flat, round pieces called stones) on a square wooden board (goban) checkered by 19 vertical lines and 19 horizontal lines to form 361 intersections; more recently, it has been played electronically on computers and on the Internet.
By the 1970s, games could be played electronically, then hand-held devices provided mobile entertainment, and by the last decade of the 20th century, via networked play.
And though taps players are often found at funerals for those who have died during active service, America's "final salute" for many departed active and inactive service men and women is also frequently played electronically, either via a CD or a switch of a button on a digital bugle that looks nearly identical to the real thing.
"A whole generation is having more fun playing John Madden electronically than watching him on television," said Mr. Burton at the University of Oregon.
His 1994 video sculpture Internet Dream in this exhibition is a wall of 52 TV monitors, some mounted sideways, that play electronically generated imagery, heralding an age of infotainment saturation.
I mean beyond the Webster's "popular music usually played on electronically amplified instruments and characterized by a persistent heavily accented beat, repetition of simple phrases…" blah blah blah.
She jumped in spastic mock-tantrums and struck careful ballet poses, occasionally switched to a synthesizer-keyboard that she played while electronically treating her vocals, and projected a personality that was both overwhelmed and controlling.
The bassist, Pat Noecker, played lines electronically altered to sound like a guitar; the standing percussionist, Bill Salas, played a drum machine where real drums would perfectly suffice; and the chattering, stern, cocky, ironic lead singer, Ms. Barie, affected derangement of the senses.
A conventional piece of popular music does not become electronic music by being played on an electronically amplified guitar, nor does a Bach fugue become electronic music if played on an electronic organ instead of a pipe organ.
He is also often asked to write rule books, and tests out whether they work by creating the game electronically and playing it with friends online via Skype.
