outside reading xi

Outside Reading X-
an editorial
by Stanley Fish
What Did Watson the Computer Do?
February 19, 2011.

"What Did Watson the Computer Do?" is an editorial by Stanley Fish, discussing a new super-smart computer from IBM named Watson. 

The language he uses is smart and effective- good for an editorial. For instance, he uses a seemingly unconnected situation to relate the the computer's flaws, which turns out to be quite helpful for understanding. He tells the story of a fourth grader who was suspended for putting a "kick me please" sign on a friend's back; the school claimed that the "'incident is in violation of the Discipline Code and is classified as infraction A37 — engaging in bullying behavior.'” Fish explains that it's a part of the school's "zero tolerance policy", which "means no deviation from a precisely and narrowly formulated rule." He makes the situation seem ridiculous, which, in my opinion, it really is. Was there any real threat to this fourth grader? Was he really being "bullied"? Of course not. But the school ran a system, and the child was punished accordingly. This is what Watson computer would do.

Fish also uses imagery to accentuate the necessity of human emotion and human holism. He lists actions that one would usually classify as "bad", say, jaywalking, lying, or speeding. But he plants extraneous images in our mind- a dog in the middle of the road, an innocent person in danger, a pregnant wife in the backstreet. He forces the reader to imagine these potentially disastrous situations, which make for a better understanding of why, sometimes, rules must be broken.

And, diction. Fish is very up-front with his words, choosing quite pejorative ones. He states, right out there, "The computer I am writing this column on is a fool." Through syntax as well he makes his feelings known, often placing quotation marks around words, which question the intelligence of the computer, for example: "[The computer] has a program that directs it to finish words before I do by 'consulting' a data base of words...". By using these quotation marks, Fish downgrades the ability of the computer to do anything besides simply run through a set of predetermined functions and programs.

This tone would be appropriate for an AP essay, provided a few informalities (such as using the first-person) were taken out. It may be a little too opinionated though, as Fish is rather dry and cutting in making his point known- but there is no denying that he gets his point across, and across well.

I was drawn to this article mainly because in my computer science class, we were shown the clip of Watson playing Jeopardy against Ken Jennings, and some other guy. So there's my personal connection. The clip was actually pretty interesting- Alex Trebek was there, and the computer totally owned everyone. I was pretty awed by it, but after reading this article, I've changed my perception. The computer's ability I really can't define as "intelligence"... it has a stored database of information that it just sifts through and finds. Not to say that the advancement in technology isn't fascinating and frightfully useful, it's just different from the sort of perceptiveness that one can only experience through human interaction, sentience, and life itself.