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Subject: Describing the Brain
In my infrequent attempts to write down what I think about mental processes, I usually describe the components of the brain as if it were a computer. Parallel processes, interlinked subsystems, communication buses and so on.
It turns out, and I really shouldn't be surprised by this, that people have been describing the processes of the brain based on the available technologies more or less forever.
Taken from this page.
It turns out, and I really shouldn't be surprised by this, that people have been describing the processes of the brain based on the available technologies more or less forever.
If we look back over recent centuries we will see the brain described as a hydrodynamic machine, clockwork, and as a steam engine. When I was a child in the 1950's I read that the human brain was a telephone switching network. Later it became a digital computer, and then a massively parallel digital computer. A few years ago someone put up their hand after a talk I had given at the University of Utah and asked a question I had been waiting for for a couple of years: "Isn't the human brain just like the world wide web?". The brain always seems to be one of the most advanced technologies that we humans currently have.
Taken from this page.
BLEARGH