27. Cognitive Computing – the new Paradigm of the Digital World

Cognitive systems like IBM Watson understand at scale, reason with a purpose, learn with each new interaction, and interact naturally with humans, augmenting human intelligence – but before discerning the significance of cognitive computing, it is firstly important to place it within historical context. To date, there have been three distinct eras of computing: 1) The Tabulating Era which helped revolutionize the way in which we were able manage large volumes of structured data like the census; 2) The Programmatic Era which ushered in the computer revolution allowing us to apply rules and logic revolutionizing the ways in which large and complex transactions were automated (e. g. financial systems, travel systems, etc.); and 3) The Cognitive Era which is extending our ability to work with information of all types, structured and unstructured (e. g. text, pictures, video), with natural conversational interaction, exploration not simple search, decision optimization based on evidence and confidence, all in a time frame that allows us to achieve better results.