IBM

They Were There: Errol Morris’ Centennial Documentary About IBM

by Socrates
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Last week I interviewed James Martin for my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast. Among many other things James spent decades at IBM and was among the key people who super-charged the company’s rise to dominance during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and in the process changed the world. During our conversation James noted the vital importance of companies such as IBM, HP, Google and Microsoft, and stressed that it was firms like those (and not governments) that deserve credit for technological innovation and progress. Yesterday, as I watched Errol Morris‘ centennial documentary about IBM, I recalled Martin’s words about the pioneering work the company has done for the last 100 years. While the movie was most likely commissioned by IBM itself, and does not go over some of the few dark spots of the firm’s history, it does a fantastic [...]

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Dharmendra Modha on How to Build a Brain-like Computer

by Socrates
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Mapping the entire human brain one neuron at a time, discovering its complete functionality and then simulating it in a virtual environment is one of the major benchmarks on the way to the singularity. If successful it will have wide ranging implications for a variety fields from medicine and supercomputing to neuroscience and artificial intelligence. I have previously posted some interesting videos of Henry Markram and his Blue Brain project. In this video Dharmendra Modha, manager of Cognitive Computing department at IBM and a principle investigator for a DARPA funded project called SyNAPSE, talks about his goal to build a brain-like computer which is both cheap and easy to make and, similarly to a human brain, has a very low energy consumption. Related articles by Zemanta Artificial Brains Are Imminent… Not! (scientificamerican.com) When Will We Be Able to Build Brains [...]

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IBM Creates Smallest 3D Nano-Map

by Socrates

The documentary Nano, the Next Dimension is interesting and worth watching but is a bit dated because it was produced in 2002. Just two days ago IBM announced a fresh breakthrough in the field of nanotechnology and to demonstrate its capabilities created the world’s smallest 3D nanoscale map. See this video detailing the challenges and breakthroughs of the project: Read an excerpt from IBM’s Press Release: ZURICH & SAN JOSE, Calif. - 23 Apr 2010:  IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists have created a 3D map of the earth so small that 1,000 of them could fit on one grain of salt. The scientists accomplished this through a new, breakthrough technique that uses a tiny, silicon tip with a sharp apex — 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil — to create patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometers at greatly [...]

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Elementary, my dear, Watson: Who is Smarter than Human?

by Socrates
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In the 1940s Alan Turing famously predicted that one day computers will defeat humans in chess. In 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Gary Kasparov. Currently, IBM is building a natural language processing computer named Watson, designed to compete in the game show Jeopardy and, ultimately, defeat any human opponent. (You can test yourself against Watson by playing the NY Times Trivia Challenge Game here.) As you can see in the videos Watson is still very much a work in progress. However, is there anyone who honestly doubts the inevitable? Do you need to be a Sherlock Holmes to see what’s coming? I think it’s elementary. Big deal. Someone will say. I remember reading once that famous linguist Noam Chomsky commented that Deep Blue defeating Kasparov in chess was as interesting as a bulldozer winning the [...]

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IBM: 5 Innovations that will Change Cities in the Next 5 Years

by Socrates

Buildings that know when they need to be fixed before something breaks; sensors that tell the fire department details of a fire before they receive the emergency phone call; smart water and sewage systems that filter and recycle water. . . See the modern city as it will be in 5 years time as foreseen by IBM. (Main story at http://asmarterplanet.com)

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