The Portfolio of Rex Barkdoll, Web User Interface Designer

Wow, Check out the history of IBM innovation!

100 years means a Century of Innovation that's changed the world...

As you may or may not know, I love computers. History is also cool when you see how far we've come. Just take a look at this video and watch as we build and innovate to get to where we are today.

Have you heard from IBM in the past few years? I haven't. They seem to have gone underground, but maybe they're just being quiet. (Everybody knows it's the quiet ones you have to watch.)  They've apparently been doing a whole lot of stuff behind the scenes that no one's really aware of. 

It seems like they've been developing "hmm" machines down in their underground lairs. No, "hmm" isn't an acronym, it's a sound you make when you see what they invented. It's something like Deep Blue in the 90's which was a computer that beat the world's reigning Chess Master. Honestly, what purpose does that provide? Do all failing chess players now have a trump card in their back pocket? I haven't been able to use Deep Blue to my chess-playing advantage yet. Recently they created another "hmm" computer call the Watson Supercomputer, which can solve Jeopardy questions. Again, I'm not exactly sure what obvious repercussions this has, but Ray Kurzweil seems to have a clue.

Personally I'm usually sitting in two camps at the same time. Half of me is really excited to see what the future brings and the other half of me fully believes that the Terminator series will one day come to fruition. I'm hoping we learn from our movie and book industries and avoid that apocalyptic direction, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. For now I'm just excited to see what's coming down the line, like these contact lenses that project a display into your eye, or this impermeable sonar skin. If you hear of any other cool stuff, give me a heads up, I love knowing about it!