As that dire day looms, how can we become a Watson? Instead of wasting time conducting research showing that technology restricts human development, perhaps we need to use Watson as a role model and learn from his mighty brain.

It may be too late for most adults, but surely we can train our youth to become superheroes on this new beachhead of unlimited knowledge. Can we do it? If we can produce a Watson, we should be able to become a Watson. As lousy as this feels, I suppose we must at least take up this cause for our children.

By shaping our children's brains and the environment, we can give them a "Head Start Program" that really works. Watson has achieved his superhuman status by putting all his eggs in one or two baskets. Auditory memory is the key.

Since acquisition and retention of verbal information is located primarily in the left temporal lobe of the brain, we need to take advantage of brain plasticity to alter the young child's mind by concentrating on auditory memory to the exclusion of other brain functions.

Young children's brains are especially plastic and able to distribute learning to all cognitive centers, thereby diluting the power of the monster left temporal lobe. Regions of the brain that distract from or interfere with auditory memory must be diminished; areas stimulated by touch, physical activity and visual perception. This means eliminating children's sports and playtime as well as poetry, the visual arts, sculpture and other hands-on activities.

Social interaction requires memory but unfortunately triggers those pesky competing brain areas housing empathy and the ability to read facial expressions that short circuit Watson's memory. Therefore, social interaction on a face-to-face basis must go. In fact, these sentimental close encounters are downright dangerous, leading to sensuous touch or the warmth of camaraderie.

And we will need to invent a device that allows youngsters to exchange facts and details in a quick, birdlike way, perhaps using abbreviations and acronyms, without deep meaning. Telephone messages may not be as harmful as face-to-face contact, but even phone talk lures the child into the development of empathy and nonverbal communications, hindering the growth of auditory brain areas.

Emotion, motivation and imagination are other threats to memory acquisition and recall. Watson wastes little time on emotion and empathy, and in fact has a sociopathic personality disorder. Not that Watson is going to be robbing banks anytime soon or even driving the getaway car, but the bad guys will pay a premium for his ability to calculate how much cash is in the vault at 4:27 on a Wednesday in March and to remember vault combinations.

And like all good sociopaths, Watson has no concern about the impact of these robberies on depositors. If Watson could speak, he would tell us that insurance companies can afford to make up the loss, especially when he knows their last quarterly net profit to the penny.

It's unlikely Watson will dream up a bank job on his own however, because he is not distracted by fantasies of sitting on the beach in Hawaii, drinking a Captain Morgan and Coke, and ogling beautiful women in bikinis. His lack of imagination is another reason his memory is so vast, and this is a valuable clue for principals, educators and writers of curriculum guides for children.

Maybe we'll name our children Charles, because like the iconic and muscle-bound Charles Atlas, who helped skinny boys fight off bullies on the beach, they'll be kicking sand in Watson's face.

Another major enemy in our quest to be Watson is the makeup of the frontal lobes of the brain. They are hardwired to regulate, control and manage other cognitive processes. The frontal lobes represent the orchestra leader who pulls together and integrates information from all areas of the brain. In building Charles (and Charlene), we don't want an orchestra leader; we only need a good trumpet section.

In order to counteract frontal lobe development which may dilute auditory memory, our children's brains must be occupied for 8 to 10 hours a day in activities that do not promote abstract thinking and learning skills -- projects that keep Charlene and Charley continuously busy keeping tabs on everything, without really focusing on anything.

Perhaps we can develop electronic games with captivating graphics and audio systems. These engaging games will reinforce stimulus-driven attention, not the purposeful attention necessary to master challenging, but important, academic subjects such as geography. (Knowing that Montreal isn't a city in the United States may come in handy on a trivia show some day.) And we'll need games featuring bloody mayhem in order captivate male children and adolescents. Building these games will be expensive --but certainly worth the effort.

Granted, Watson utilizes reasoning algorithms and is capable of some delay while he searches for correct answers. These are frontal lobe functions, but hardwiring and input to the frontal lobes that we've been unable to prevent will give Charles and Charlene sufficient juice to satisfy these minimal requirements.

Of course, there are still a few old-timers, psychologists and philosophers mostly, who want to hang on to the past. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, John Searle claimed that Watson is a device that merely manipulates formal symbols and that while Watson won the competition on Jeopardy, he doesn't even realize he won!

Similarly, our new Charles and Charlene may not know they kicked sand into bully Watson's circuitry, but we need to sacrifice a few things in order to share in this powerful, new intellectual pool and to advance civilization. Awareness of the broader world and its impact on each of us is a luxury our kids can't afford.

Now I'm on the lookout for inventors and entrepreneurs who are willing to create electronic games to keep our children busy, along with devices that will speed the exchange of facts and details in quick, birdlike messages without deep meaning,

Anyone interested?