Thomas Watson should be a familiar name to those interested in technology. In fact, it ought to be evocative of major changes in how we transfer information and ultimately organize work by dint of its identification with two individuals having that name. The first Thomas Watson was the assistant summoned by Alexander Graham Bell in the first telephone call. The second one was a long time CEO of IBM whose name was affixed to the computer that beat the star human performers in several games of Jeopardy.

The telephone call Watson (1) received heralded the transformation of medical care in many ways. Along with the coincident development of the elevator it made possible the modern hospital enabling it to be situated in a large edifice. The elevator made feasible vertical transportation and therefore stacking wards, operating suites and radiology departments in multiple stories with Radiology usually on the bottom. The telephone made possible efficient horizontal (and vertical) communication.

What has been revealed with Watson (2)? It is but the latest manifestation of the astounding reordering of knowledge made manifest by the development of the computer harnessed to the internet. First the telegraph and the telephone enabled the rapid transmission of words beyond the delimited space extending from eye to eye and within the extent of the range of articulated speech. Next radio and television revealed that words and then images could be sent to many people at great distances from one source. First the fax machine and the Internet has expanded the ease of bilateral word communication or more precisely real time consultations and added to it equally facile image transmission. As applied to radiographic displays it allowed the creation of the multi-billion dollar teleradiology industry. Watson (2) revealed that not just words and pictures were both ubiquitously deployable but that the whole of the universe factual knowledge, too, was readily retrievable and deployable too. It demonstrated that anything that had been archived can be retrieved in less than the time the human brain could recall it from memory.