Church Of IBM

Big textThe Church Of IBM is a polytheistic religious group founded by fanatics of the IBM corporation.

They are best known for their worship of Watson, the artificial intelligence developed by IBM. They also worship IBM itself.

History

The Church of IBM was started in 1982, it was not long after the release of the IBM personal computer, the intense leap in technology that the PC represented lead the founders of the religion to believe that IBM was in close contact with aliens, (or perhaps was itself run by aliens) of a higher intelligence and sophistication than humanity. The IBM 5150 PC is speculated by members of the Church Of IBM to bear supernatural abilities.

In the early and mid 1990s, the church was divided, as IBM began losing money, causing members of the church to shun anyone who they deemed "disrespectful" of IBM.

In 1997, IBM's "Deep Blue" supercomputer had played a chess game with a world chess champion...and won. The Church Of IBM was once again convinced that IBM possessed immense power and significance, once again citing the theory of alien contact. Deep Blue became one of the church of IBM's Gods, the god of intelligence.

IBM went on to develop Watson in the 2000s, an artificial intelligence designed to answer questions. Watson won a game of Jeopardy in 2011; after which the Church Of IBM designated Watson as another one of their Gods, the god of wisdom.

Loyalty to IBM

Members of the Church Of IBM cannot use any product that is a competitor to one of IBM's, they can use non-IBM products so long as an IBM-branded alternative does not exist. Followers of IBM are often spotted carrying an IBM ThinkPad running the latest compatible Red Hat Enterprise Linux, instead of a smartphone. Before IBM's acquisition of Red Hat, the most popular operating system amongst members of the religion was OS/2.