For the most powerful computer in the world, participating in a beloved game show against mere humans was probably just another day at the office (so to speak). If you managed to catch IBM's aptly named "Watson" supercomputer competing against long-standing Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, you saw a landmark moment in the history of computing as well as an undeniably good show.

As Jennings described Watson for Slate, "Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman."

Humor aside, Watson is not just great at trivia. IBM describes its potential as part of their "smarter planet" initiative as using a new technology called DeepQA to answer questions posed in natural human language. In an overloaded world where we rely on a search algorithm like Google to return millions of results for any query, a better and simpler solution to the challenge of finding that one piece of information is something that any of us can appreciate.

For creating the next revolution in computing--one that finally focuses more on understanding than speed--the team behind IBM's Watson supercomputer is Character Approved.

[Image: IBM]