IBM
The 60-Year Rise of IBM's Immortal Mainframe
The very term "mainframe computers" brings to mind data scientists in lab coats shuffling punch cards and smoking cigarettes, but don't let that get to you. Despite decades of technology evangelists calling for the death of the ancient mainframe...
The Largest Computer In The World
h3. How to fight Soviet missiles with punch cards, light wands and the world's biggest computerShortly after the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb, on August 29, 1949, the United States government decided that it needed some technology...
The "Waiting for Superman" Director Made a Film for IBM About Ducks
Between "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Waiting for Superman," Davis Guggenheim has probably become the country's most famous young serious non-fiction filmmaker. Now he's made a short film for none other than IBM. It features the voice of David...
The Engineer Who Taught Computers To Whistle
If computer music had parents, Mathews would be its father, and IBM (which itself turns 100 today) is most certainly its birth mother. In the late 1950's Mathews developed "MUSIC":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSIC-N, the very first digital music...
What Some of Our Thoughtful Human Friends Think About Watson
h3. _Some thoughts from Sherry Turkle, Jason Silva, Ben Huh, David Weinberger, Ray Kurzweil, Kenneth Livingston, Zach Kanin, Rita King, J-Bot, Doug Rushkoff, Tim Hwang, Shane Hope, Paola Antonelli, Tim Wu, Stuart Watson_ Is anyone really surprised...
How Watson Learned to Speak
A year ago, Watson couldn't say the word "koala." Watch as his speech progresses thanks to the tweaks of IBM engineers, so that now we have a computer that can not only respond to the clue "Johann, can I borrow some sugar? In Weimar, Schiller's house...
When Kasparov Lost to Deep Blue: Video
Fifteen years ago, the best a computer could do was beat our greatest chess player at chess. The computer won the match 3.5 - 2.5 and Kasparov lost a chess match for the first time in his life. We understood how it worked: the computer could think...
Robots Better Not Mess With My Shows Again
I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m assuming that I’m the only one who DVRs Jeopardy, so if you missed the trifecta of Watson episodes this week, you’ll probably never see it anyway. Well, in a surprising turn of evens, Watson, the super computer...
A Computer Named Watson Won Jeopardy: Video
IBM's Watson computer won Jeopardy last night against its two most successful human players. While Watson cooled off underneath the special Jeopardy stage IBM built for the purpose of showing off their storied new brand name, the audience could be...
Welcome, Our New Computer Overlords
After yet another convincing defeat, Ken Jennings, the winningest human Jeopardy player of all time, could be seen wringing the mock neck of Watson's avatar. The machine had prevailed, having left its human contenders with nary a chance or a hope.
Watson's Hardest Question: "What Is Life?"
Here’s a possibly little-known piece of trivia: the company that built a computer that could beat humans at Jeopardy was born long before the modern computer. Back in the 1880s, it was known as the confluence of three companies, the Tabulating...
How to Design the Face of a Supercomputer: Video
The swirling, colorful face of IBM’s Jeopardy-machine Watson is part pure representation--of answer confidence, for example--part branding, and, to hear the creators tell it, art. Personally, I think it would have been best to line up Watson’s 1...