This marks another important milestone in computer development. This goes beyond the HAL9000 in “2001 – A Space Odyssey” and its only 2011. We’ve been around long enough to know that there’s more computing power in the palm of your hand than there was in a room full of computers 25 years ago, so it makes sense to imagine that the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer of today will fit into your palm by 2030. I can’t wait for the future!

The author, Ken Jennings, faces off against IBM’s “Watson” in Jeopardy!When I was selected as one of the two human players to be pitted against IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer in a special man-vs.-machine Jeopardy! exhibition match, I felt honored, even heroic. I envisioned myself as the Great Carbon-Based Hope against a new generation of thinking machines—which, if Hollywood is to believed, will inevitably run amok, build unstoppable robot shells, and destroy us all. But at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Lab, an Eero Saarinen-designed fortress in the snowy wilds of New York’s Westchester County, where the shows taped last month, I wasn’t the hero at all. I was the villain.