h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has been said (and often repeated) that there is nothing new under the sun...whether there is anything new over it remains a matter of contention. However what this leads us to is that humans have never really invented anything...just dicovered how things already work (a lever was still a lever even before primitive man first used it to pry of beer caps) All of this may seem remarkably off topic....and probably is....but the point is that in creating computers, humans have done nothing more than make a very simplified version of a their own neural system...the two even function on the same stuff, electricity (apparently when looked at through electron microscopes computer chips and neurons look almost identical) The end result is that computers are destined to think like we do and eventually outthink us altogether......Such is evolution....we will be on the scrap heap of outdated models before you can say "lickitysplit" four million times and the computers will have debates about whether or not they actually came from degenerate organic life or the "Great Binary Number Cruncher" created them in its image......

"... and in the beginning there was void, and the great binary number cruncher sayth "this does not compute" and it created the world in seven clock ticks (each exactly 1.8 seconds long) and in the first clock tick it made the earth and the sun and the stars (and it ran the program "light.exe" and there was light ...) in the second it created beasts of burden and attack. in the third there sprang forth the most primitive of vacuum tubes. in the fourth, was the birth of transistors. in the fifth, suddenly silicon circuits came into use. in the sixth ************ was invented. and it look at what it had done, returned -1 and went into an infinate loop"
extract from a book which accidently fell thru a time warp in the year 10101101 AA (after apes). bits have been censored where they refer to things yet to be ...

> "apparently when looked at through electron microscopes computer chips and neurons look almost identical"

Uh, no.

You could trust me when I say that computers and brains are completely different, or you could make me give a long list of the differences. Physically they are completely and utterly and hugely and imposibly different...

It's a nice idea, but one not supported by reality, I'm afraid.

I trust you.... its just something I read in a Scientifical type magazine once....

and I've seen a photo of human brain cells growing on a silicon wafer.... weird....

Sounds like the opening picture to Masamune Shirow's `Ghost In The Shell'; biological neural network growing on and linked to a digital chip.