The borderlands are where the hurt happens – whether the no-man’s land at the US / Mexican border or the 20 feet or so beyond the breakers where the big pelagics slowly patrol. But zones aren’t just physical. Shifts of any kind create disruptions. Shifts produce changes in behavior and changes in behavior create opportunities for […]
Killing Watson: Defeating Alien Intelligence by Questioning the Givens and Changing the Game
My eyes started darting when I realized what Watson was doing—preying on our cognitive blind spot and vacuuming the highest-value clues off the board before we had a chance to gain our sea legs. But my response surprised me—by my second match, I was doing the same thing. What do you do when confronted by […]
In Watson, IBM Has Found Its “Neil Armstrong” Statement
In the sweep of Giant Killer contests – Hollywood notwithstanding – it would be hard to imagine that humanity would come in second to a computer in the nuanced world of context, puns and trivia. So we have to give credit to the newest entry in the Killing Giants lexicon: Watson, from IBM. Last night, […]
What Groupon’s CEO Should Have Said
The following memo, penned by someone other than Groupon’s CEO, was not posted on Groupon’s blog yesterday: Dear Customers, Super Bowl Viewers and Ad Critics: What a game! I personally thought the Steelers were going to come back with 2 minutes left like they did against the Cardinals, but hey, that’s football. Hope you […]
Go Daddy, Super Bowl Advertising, and the Decline of the Chattering Class
“Go Daddy reported a doubling of its previous best-ever immediate Web spike and converted the Internet traffic into sales and new customers unlike ever before in the company’s seven-year Super Bowl history, according to a company news release the day after the Super Bowl.” Dear Chattering Class: Until Chrysler, Doritos and VW post similar […]
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