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Monthly ArchiveOctober 2009

commentary &energy &humor &satire &tech 15 Oct 2009 08:20 am

Build a Smarter Planet?

By now, you’ve probably been exposed to IBM’s ad campaign, “Let’s Build a Smarter Planet Together.”

Naturally, such a bold proposition invites a few questions.

Forget for a moment about building a “smarter” planet. How does one build a planet at all? Where would you put it. There’s only one ideal place for a planet that can support life that we’ve been able to find and it’s currently occupied.
How big will this planet be? If it’s going to be anywhere the size of Earth, then where does IBM plan on getting the materials? Is there a Planet Depot out there somewhere? And what’s the construction process? How do you keep the molten core from cooling off while you wrap it in the mantle, crust, etc. ? Where do you get the water? How about all the minerals? While they’re building it and it’s getting bigger, its gravitational force will increase. But in the early phases, how do you prevent the bulldozers from just floating into space?
There are, of course, various theories about how our current planet was “built.” Some believe it was just a random lucky set of conditions–a cosmic lottery winner. You have just the right temperature range, water, evolution and BAM! next thing you know Times Square appears. Others believe that the Earth was created by God (or Gods or Deities of one sort or another). I realize that this is a gross simplification–there are countless faiths each with their own cosmological story–but for now let’s just classify them as the “not random” school. Either way, the challenges to IBM are mind-blowing. Does IBM think it can replicate the perfect conditions for life; can it guess a lottery number whose odds are 999 million-gazillion-squllion-to-one? Does it have billions of years to tinker with the conditions until it gets them right and single-celled protozoa materialize out of a bolt of lightning? Or does IBM think it can pull this off with the same speed and ease as beating Garry Kasparov in a chess match? What’s more of a concern: Does IBM think it is God (or a Deity or Gods)? Will IBM build this planet in six days? They usually take six months just to write a requirements document for a relatively simple thing like an ecommerce web site.
Who will govern this planet? If IBM builds a new planet, is it still also an earth-based corporation? Will it pay taxes on income from this new planet? How about all these mid-sized business that IBM says are the “engines” of this new planet?
Will this new planet have a new ozone layer with no holes in it?
Who will be allowed to immigrate to this new “smarter” planet? Will there be a test? If Jerry Springer somehow gets in, isn’t that going to ruin everything?
Is IBM saying the Earth is stupid?