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Is There a Computer In Your Head?

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Stairway to the Mind
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Abstract

In an age when children use computers with nonchalance, when even the cheapest wristwatches contain rudimentary computers, it has almost become a cliche to reverse the popular comparison between brains and computers. We have heard for years that a watch has a “brain” on a silicon chip. But now, increasingly, we also read that the neurons of a human brain are themselves integrated circuits—and, to hear the boasts of some computer enthusiasts, not particularly fast ones at that! Even on the street, far from the university, one may hear that a brain is a machine, destined sooner or later to be overtaken by some piece of electronic equipment.

Membranes, webs of nerves that lay white and limp, have filled and spread themselves and float round us like filaments, making the air tangible and catching in them far-away sounds unheard before. Virginia Woolf

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag New York

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Scott, A. (1995). Is There a Computer In Your Head?. In: Stairway to the Mind. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2510-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2510-2_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7566-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-2510-2

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