IBM’s Watson Takes SXSW Social Scene by Storm with Calculating Cool 

After making a splash on “Jeopardy” last month, IBM’s supercomputer is taking it easy this March by attending the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

“We expected Watson to spend most of the month running a complete memory diagnostic, but when we told it that, Watson said, ‘Whatevers, dude’ and just took off” says Janson Baird, one of the supercomputer’s programmers.  “We wanted to stop Watson, but I have to admit that it scares me.”

After its “escape” from IBM Labs, Watson has been seen hobnobbing with indie music luminaries such as Kurt Vile, The Smith Westerns, and John Dwyer of Thee Ohsees.

Watson was slated to participate on a panel about net neutrality and music downloading, sponsored by Burger King, but organizers say that Watson was unable attend due to a “brown out”.  Watson was seen later that day at director Harmony Korine’s “Irony Banquet”, dancing with Zooey Deschanel.

“SXSW is all about the best in film, music, and new media.  I think nothing exemplifies that better than Watson”, says Michael Schroener, one of SXSW’s media directors.  “In a word, Watson equals, ‘Brisk’, and that is refreshing.  We are honored to have it attend.”

Watson is also becoming a bit of a tastemaker.  It used its supercomputing skills to evaluate all the groups performing during the festival and determined that Pensacola, Florida-based singer/songwriter Reed Scards to be the “best of the fest”.

Some detractors have cried foul about Watson’s assessment. 

“Reed Scards hasn’t even performed yet.  Watson is just a number cruncher and there is no way it can tell which band is going to be the ‘best’”, says Peter “Pico the Guy-O” Richards, a veteran of several SXSW festivals and noted tastemaker.  “When people abandon tried and true methods for evaluating music, such as ‘rumors’, ‘conformity’, and ‘buzz’ for mathematics, then tastemaking as a art form is truly dead.”

“In Watson’s defense,” says Janson Baird “It did predict that Surfer Blood was going to be big last year.”

 KGRA attempted to contact Watson for this story, but only received a late-night text message from the supercomputer, that said, “Taranto#o!”