Watson

This has been, other than the whole revolution in Northern Africa/Middle East, the craziest story in terms of future possibilities of my life time. As some of you may, or may not know, Watson is a computer developed by IBM that could recognize language and then use it's immense amount of memory to trounce Champion contestants on Jeopardy. Of course, there was some controversy, mostly being that Watson had an unfair buzzer advantage. Really, who cares? The point is that this is potentially the biggest thing coming.

Imagine, if you will, you at your best. You're efficient, you're motivated, you had a terrific morning BM. At work, you're coming up with solutions and analyzing data to show your boss so that he could make the best decision. Well, you can be replaced. That computer sitting sitting in the center seat on Jeopardy can trounce you. He has roughly a gajillion terabytes of memory. We could flood "his" memory with legal texts from every court case imaginable and all of those lawyers who never step foot in a court room are basically unemployed.

As somebody who works in logistics my job is to use the targets that are appointed to me. I'm supposed to make decisions based on those metrics. This seems, to me, to be relatively simple for a computer assuming that it has all of the information it needs. With the correct info the computer can literally, I'd assume in less than a minute route a Pepsi truck with the most efficient order and fairly evenly distribute cases and stops amongst them so that their work times are minimal and that would take trucks off the road if need be. All it would need is the information in its seemingly endless supply of memory.

This kind of technology could save a company millions of dollars annually. I'm not sure what Watson goes for in terms of asking price (he did, afterall, just win IBM $1 million, which is going to charity) but I believe that it is pretty safe to assume that over the long term, this would be immensely cost efficient.

There is however, the possibility of Watson becoming the greatest diagnostician ever on his trip to Columbia Medical School. Move over 'House.' Watson can use all of the information available, patient history, symptoms and every text book and medical research article ever written to come up with a list of potential diagnosis. Watson could probably even select the best course of treatment. And, with its voice recognition software you could just tell "him" what's going on.

This technology is pretty ridiculous and I can't believe more of a big deal isn't made about this. Yes it's a machine and yes there are about a million adjustments that could be made to it. But, good Lord, this is pretty exciting. A computer that not only can do complicated algorhythms at lightning speed and has an almost infinite space for memory could be a better you and me.

We're only one step closer Skynet. If you're reading this, you are the resistance.