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So I have my physicist, Mike, and I have my brain-damaged fellow, Steve. But I don't have a story. There is no conflict, except in Steve's mind, because he thinks he's going crazy, and no one wants to be crazy. I needed drama on a larger scale, particularly for Mike, and I also needed to know why Steve suddenly possessed these abilities. Since the Higgs boson has been pretty elusive so far, that became Mike's main roadblock. I also gave him an unreasonable, profit-hungry boss. And I decided that Steve didn't just magically wake up with new abilities--someone operated on him, and he became their experiment.

Naturally, I turned to the Web to learn about how the brain works. Now here's a really, really fascinating subject. Science knows a quite a bit about how the physical brain works, the chemical and electrical processes, but they know much less about how individual neurons work together to create the mind. One neuron isn't the brain. One neuron might fire or it might not fire. And since the neurons all look relatively similar to each other, the prevailing idea on how the mind works is this: the network of neurons in our brain all follow similar, simple rules on how to process information. Because of the extremely large number of neurons (perhaps 100 billion), and the high level of interconnectedness in our brain, the mind is thought to emerge. This process, commonly referred to as a "neural network," is different than the computing process employed by the PC you're sitting in front of now. A typical electronic circuit performs calculations millions of times faster than an interneuronal connection, but it processes information in a linear way, making one comparison at a time. There are certain problems a computer can work out more quickly than the average human (arithmetic) and other problems that the brain is better at (recognizing a human face). But someday, when computers have become even faster than today, and particularly if and when they are designed to operate in three dimensions instead of two, computers might possess the same pattern recognition abilities as the human mind and still be good at the linear processes. Thinking computers may seem like science fiction, but I bet they aren't as far away as we think.

For a remarkable example of how capable an artificial neural net can be (and this one is less powerful than a human brain by many orders of magnitude), try this web site. Think of an object, then play the game, and see how long it takes to guess what you're thinking of. This site is amazing. And addictive.
http://www.20q.net/

A great discussion of emergent mental processes can be found here:
http://www.hjalli.com/writing/mind_emerges.htm

For further exploration into the exponential gains in computer processing power, read this:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html

Or, if you're feeling lonely, have a chat with ALICE.
http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1

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Thomas World Launch Party

September 7, 7:00 PM
Harwelden Mansion
Tulsa