Business has, arguably, never been better for IBM than it is at the moment. IBM的生意可以說從來都沒有像現在這麼好過。
Last week, its stock hit an all-time high. It's neck and neck with Microsoft as the world's second most valuable tech company. 該公司股價上週創下歷史新高，和微軟勢均力敵，成為全世界價值第二高的科技公司。
IBM's vice president of innovation, Bernie Meyerson, IBM創新事業部副總柏尼‧梅爾森
showed us how Big Blue has come a long way from those punch cards and screens like that. 帶我們看看「藍色巨人」如何從打孔卡片和這樣的螢幕起家，一路走來獲得顯著的發展。
What IBM innovations have been about, if you get down to it, are the recording and tabulating of data, and then doing something with that data. 如果你追根究底，IBM 所做的創新是關於數據資料的記錄和製表，接著再處理該數據，
It can be computing. It can be deep analytics. It can be any of the above. 可能是運算，可能是深入分析，上述提到的任何一種都可以。
Even if you go all the way back to the very beginnings of the IBM company, we're talking 1911, we were about that. We did time clocks. 即使你一路回溯到 IBM 公司最初的開端，我指的是一九一一年，我們就在做那樣的事了。我們製作時鐘。
Fast forward to the time that data really became a huge challenge, was after the Great Depression. 時間快速推進到數據真正變成一項巨大挑戰的時候，那是在經濟大蕭條之後。
We developed the Hollerith machines that did all of the counting and all of the accounting for, for instance, the rollout of Social Security. 我們發明了能執行各種運算和會計的霍爾瑞斯機器，舉例來說，是為了因應社會保險制度上路。
What would you do with 30 million people you had to keep track of? 如果你必須記錄三千萬個人，你會怎麼做？
It's physically impossible without these machines that could, at high speeds, sort the punch cards that had the data on every person in the U.S. 這些打孔卡片上有每一位美國人民的數據，如果沒有這些可以快速整理分類的機器，實際上是不可能辦到的。
Now, if you move forward into the future, the amounts of data are tens of millions of times more complex. 現在，如果你朝未來邁進，所有資料的龐雜程度更是千百萬倍。
If you have more data, tens of millions of times, you need to be able to work with it tens of millions of times more quickly, or it's useless. 如果你有更多數據，多達千百萬倍，你必須要能以快千百萬倍的速度來處理它，否則就沒有用了。
We came up with things such as this thing here -- the disk drive. 我們發明了像是這樣的東西——磁碟機。
Now, of course, the joke is that monster there, that rather large platter, was part of the original disk drive. 現在，當然，那邊那個龐然大物已經變成了笑話，那個巨大的平盤，是原本磁碟機的一部份。
Back then, in the mid-1950s when we invented it, the unit that held five megabits of data, roughly speaking, weighed 10 tons. 過去，一九五○年代中期我們發明它的時候，存有五百萬位元的組件大約重達十噸。
To give you some perspective, 讓你有點概念，
today's laptops, if we'd done no further work, would weigh about 250,000 tons: give or take the weight of two big cruise ships. 如果我們不執行額外的工作，現今的筆記型電腦大約會重達二十五萬噸，差不多是兩艘大型郵輪的重量。
Now that you've even stored five million bits of data, you have to compute more quickly, and you can't use a mechanical calculator. 既然你已經儲存了五百萬位元的數據，你就必須要以更快的速度來計算，你不能用一台機械式計算機。
So what happened? 那麼發生了什麼事呢？
We developed the first digital calculators, and they were actually based on things called vacuum tubes. 我們發明了最早的電子計算機，它們基本上是以所謂的真空管為基礎。
This actually is a switch. It turns things on and off. 這個實際上是一個開關，它能開啟或關閉。
And it does computing for you in this kind of a machine. But it doesn't do a lot -- a couple of thousand operations a second. 這東西能在這類的機器中替你執行運算，但它無法執行太多——一秒運算數千次。
OK, so now you move a little further forward and you say, well, we need, for instance, to be able to operate more quickly. 好，現在你向前邁進了一點，然後你說，好，譬如我們說需要能運作得更快。
But if you do... disks don't actually store data and release it very quickly. 但是，如果你這麼做……事實上磁碟無法非常快速地儲存和釋放資料。
So we start inventing what they call solid-state memory. This is actually an example of it. 因此我們開始發明被稱為「固態記憶體」的東西，這就是它的一個樣品。
This thing is about 100 bits of data, give or take. That's all, 100 bits. Look at the size of this. 這個東西差不多有一百位元的數據。就這麼多，一百位元。看看它的尺寸。
If you fast-forward to the needs of today, you actually wind up with things like this, which are billions of bits. 如果你快速進展到今日的需求，事實上你會拿到像這樣的東西，它的容量有數十億位元。
And, in fact, the chip that has it on it is so tiny that we have to put it in a big holder like this or your fingers couldn't handle it. 事實上，儲存它的晶片實在是太小了，我們必須把它放進像這個大一點的持具中，否則你的手指根本沒辦法拿。
Along the way to building the massive computers of today, 在製造今日大型電腦的過程中，
there was a remarkable breakthrough that wasn't just really about a chip or a thing, it was, rather, the integrated whole that mattered. 有一個了不起的突破，其實不單是一個晶片或一樣東西，更精確地說，這一切的整合才是關鍵。
And the thing that IBM did that changed history, frankly, and all of us are familiar with, is we invented the personal computer. 而 IBM 所做改變了歷史的事情，坦白說，大家都很熟悉，那就是我們發明了個人電腦。
Now, there've been many breakthroughs like that the IBM company has created, not just the personal computer, but, for instance, the Selectric typewriter was another breakthrough. 如今，IBM 公司已經創造了很多像那樣的突破，不僅有個人電腦，還有例如電動打字機也是另一項突破。
The magnetic strip on the back of your credit card. The bar code. The excimer laser. 還有你信用卡背面的磁條、電腦條碼和準分子雷射，
This is simply a new type of laser that is capable of using tremendous electric fields to take things apart as opposed to heat. 其實就是一種新的雷射，能夠利用巨大的電場來分割東西，而不是用熱能。
So imagine you're reshaping somebody's cornea, which is how you do laser surgery on an eye, and yet you can do that without damaging the underlying tissue. 那麼，想像你正在重塑某人的眼角膜，就是你在眼睛上做雷射手術，但卻不會免傷害下層的組織。
That's a huge breakthrough. And guess what? That came from IBM. 那是一個重大的突破。你猜怎麼樣？這項技術來自 IBM。
IBM is here essentially because it has been able, for the last 100 years, to continuously reinvent itself. IBM 能屹立在此，基本上是因為它能在過去的一百年間持續展現新面貌。
That's just incredibly rare, especially in a field that moves at the pace of the field we're in. 那真的非常難得，尤其是在一個改變的步調如我們投身的產業這樣的領域裡。