Tech Stuff: Watson to Debut This Year

This is Watson, the newest supercomputer from IBM. One assumption: Supercomputers are extremely fast. Since they can simulate weather and nuclear explosions their speed and computational power far exceeds ordinary computers. This one has been developed to the stage where it will be tested against humans later this year on television by playing a game of "Jeopardy" against high-ability past Jeopardy champions. See Part II below.

More on Watson

This board contains an experimental algorithm instructing the supercomputer about how to sift through millions of human cultural references in order to compete as "a question-answering machine." The algorithm deals most likely in statistical probabilities as it amasses a short list of correct answers and then selects the answer to give on the Jeopardy game. It is unique in that it is not connected to the Internet; all of its data has been loaded into its machine storage and trained on how to find repeated connections to certain words and phrases that not only match but point to related different words that might constitute the answer. In this, it sifts, sorts and evaluates human references where "natural language" has been used. It must also be able to handle the coy style of Jeopardy questions which heavily use word-play.
. During one game, a category was "All Eddie Before & After" indicating that the clue would hint at two different things that need to be blended together, one of which included the name "Eddie". The $2,000. clue was "A 'Green Acres' star goes existential (& French) as the author of " 'The Fall'." Watson nailed it perfectly: "Who is Eddie Albert Camus?".
Watson's trainer said, "Humans are just--boom!--they're just plowing through this in just seconds," Mr. Ferrucci said excitedly. "They're getting questions, they're breaking them down, they're interpreting them, they're getting the right interpretation, they're looking this up in their memory, they're scoring, they're doing all this just instantly."
. Watson is known for lightning-fast response times and for a lack of emotion or stress. Samantha Boardman, who has played against Watson said, "He plays to win," she said, shaking her head. "He's really not messing around!" Still, humans continue to beat the supercomputer regularly in Jeopardy games so the contest later this year will hold great interest. The buzz-in: An onlline game: test your knowledge of trivia against Watson, IBM's "Jeopardy!"-playing supercomputer. nytimes.com/magazine
- - -from The New York Times Magazine dated June 20, 2010.

She Is a Hostess--These Are Writ Bits (#1)

A Google exec said that electronic books and readers will place book pages so that they can "live in an even more exciting life." [Meaning ads and links] "It's hard to complain about such tools. They are useful. The original genius of the book, as a technology was its profound lack of excitement. On a printed page, there's nothing going on other than words, sentences and paragraphs. The excitement of reading a book lies in our own minds as we get lost in a moving story or wrapped up in a brilliant argument. As lives of books get more exciting, we might discover that our own intellectual lives get a little duller."
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"Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and an expert on the neuroscience of reading, notes that learning to read deeply is a painstaking process, requiring changes deep in our brains. She worries that the shift from immersive page-based reading to distracted screen-based reading could impede the development of the specialized neural circuits that make richly interpretive reading possible."-compiled by Nicholas Carr in an article about Old Media vs. New Media, in the SF Chronicle Sun June 20, 2010
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"There exists a technology that allows me to explore alternate universes, tread gingerly into unknown, dark places in the forest where no one has stepped before and to return safely. This tool allows me to hear voices of others, not only in current time [?] but in ages past whether it be man or woman and also their dialects, with their deeply expressive tones and moods. It helps me to understand, when I thought myself incapable of understanding. It clears and sorts the path for me. This tool is always with me and sits atop my neck." -je

Greet The Silence

. Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day.
--from "The Infinities" a novel by John Banville, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher

Friends From Earliest Days

This is a picture of myself at a very young age. The young lady on my right arm is my young cousin, Marlene. I visited recently with her and her brother and we confirmed that we remain very close after all these years. The photo was taken on Spencer Rd in Vernalis, Ca. circa 1951. I told Marlene that, even though my memory of that day is gone, the picture confirms to me that I have been her buddy and protector from the very beginning. She later goaded me and others into playful adventures during country visits with feats of daring and shrieking, gleeful stunts. Our common trait is the knack for inventing fun on the spur of the moment. My laughter likely comes from Marlene's easy laugh and sense of everything being fun. It's still that way for us.

Statue In Restoration

Rocco Landesman, in Philadelphia, with David Gleeson of Crane Arts, center, and John Carr of Milner & Carr Conservation, which is restoring this gilded Joan of Arc statue by
Emmanuel Fremier. [Photo and coverage originally published by the New York Times, Sunday]