What IBM’s Watson supercomputer tells us about society

Syracuse, NY — IBM is to Poughkeepsie, NY, what General Motors was to Flint, Mich.; the life blood of a society.

Growing up around Poughkeepsie, I never had to explain to other students or friends what my parents did at IBM. Most of their parents worked for the company and we all had a vague understanding of what they did. Programming, sales, research, manufacturing. These were all big words that we didn’t have the mental propensity for. Every year we’d all go to “Take your child to work day,” eat lunch in the cafeteria and stare awkwardly at one another on the tour of the server room. It was all underwhelming but pretty cool. Who gets to say they saw Deep Blue?

More than 15 years later, my knowledge of IBM has grown while the company’s Poughkeepsie profile has shrunk. Hundreds of people have been laid off, properties were sold including the cornerstone that once made it great, the personal computer. Before my aunt got the ax the company made her train her replacement located somewhere in Asia. Not to mention, the company pulled it’s Olympic sponsorship after 40 years (gasp).

Now that’s all in the past.

IBM is back.

Monday night IBM’s Watson supercomputer faced off against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, two of the Jeopardy’s greatest contestants. The epic “battle of man vs. machine” is something shown in movies and dreamt up by children who wanted a light cycle but didn’t know how to make one.

The match took place at IBM’s research facility in Yorktown Heights, NY. Because of all the background information and celebratory cutaways, the episode was broken up into three parts over three days. Some people might call that overkill, I call it genius.

The match was beautiful. Seeing two middle aged white guys compete against a multi-million dollar computer is surprisingly entertaining. Whenever Watson answered a question right, I cheered. Whenever it got one wrong, I cheered. Whenever Alex Trebek opened his mouth I couldn’t stop thinking of the Saturday Night Live skit in the works.

IBM has come a long way. They’ve changed the way people access information, the way they access their money and they way people do just about everything. But let’s not forget about the skeletons in the closet sitting upright at the kitchen table.

Did they make a lot of enemies?

Yes.

Did they layoff a ton of people, including family and friends of mine?

Yes.

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right? I’m not sure. I’m a fan of Egg Beaters.

Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare are like the cool kids at the part but that party. They’re making noise, having fun and making friends. IBM is the non existent landlord who knows about the parties and riff-raff but could care less. They are adults. Sure, they may be a bunch of squares but atleast they’re out in the world doing big things.

I tip my hat to the people at IBM. They’ve made something truly incredible.

- eastcoastpaperboy