DREAMING IN THE CLOUD – PART 1

Your brain is not a computer

To understand computers, one needs to simply look at the basics of the physical aspect of computing.

Computers are circuits and silicon right? So peer and stare at them, the visual side of dissecting a computer should reveal the first truth about them: that they are merely responding to electrical pulses. The direction a certain pulse chooses to follow on the circuit allows the whole to be able to do ‘computing’ i.e. decode encode a certain follow on action.

The brain, as it turns out, is very different. While it too relies on the basic ‘premise’ of the circuit, or computing ‘logic board’, its responses and stimuli are extremely complex. It, for example, can create images that cannot be explained by ‘zooming’ into the circuitry.

Just as in computing circuitry, the circuitry of the brain does not betray its complexity because the structure remains exactly the same no matter how much you zoom in or out.

A natural illustration: the leaf appears the same no matter how much the zoom

The same would apply to the computer. It would therefore be useless to imagine alternative, artificial versions of us because in order to replicate consciousness, you must understand it. A physical inspection does not help. No more than it would help an IT grad to merely study the physical components of a computer.

Yet there are ways in which both the computer and the future of computing will 
impact the ‘human condition’. There will be consequences of technology 
enhancement. Some good, some bad. 


Next week: Dreaming in the Cloud 2: Are we Special?