Computers: It's all about evolution

Somewhere in northern New Mexico, in the super-secret labs at Sandia National Laboratories or perhaps in the various computer development centers around America (California, Texas, New York, Virginia), plans are well underway by our military to develop an organic computer, one that mimics the human brain (or that of a worm at least).

To understand how this works, first you have to understand some rules of evolution.

Nothing that can be thought of is impossible. This maxim explains that the human brain is incapable of imagining anything that is not, in some way, possible or that already exists.

The problem is, businesses hate to think that their inventions are not wholly original (and patentable).Take the transistor for example. For 30 years everyone thought this was the greatest invention by Bell Labs. Not so. It was a great discovery, or to be exact, uncover-y. Turns out, when medicine caught up, that the transistor was a mimic of the brain’s little processor called a neuron. Same function, same purpose. Only it turns out the brain’s neuron is faster, a bit smarter and, above all, is not restricted to the wire pathways connecting it to the nearest neuron (meaning it is analog not digital).

Next came the computer chip, which is basically a photograph printed on a silicon wafer, then cracked into little bits, each one containing thousands (and some millions) of transistors, each one hard connected to the one next to it. The computer chip is pretty powerful, with upward of 4 million transistors.

But compared to a worm’s brain, which has 250 times as many neurons with open pathways to each and every neuron, our best computer chips are pathetic.

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Part of the problem computer engineers are having is that the organic brain is just so darn good at a job that takes the equivalent man-man machine, using silicon wafer chips, about 2,000 times the amount of electricity to produce the same computing power. Even then, machines can only do 1 percent of the calculations of an organic brain.

The answer lies in the electro-chemical process of the organic brain. Unlike the mechanical brain, which need electricity to power circuits and make commands, allowing electronic signals to pass along fixed pathways in a programmed manner, the organic brain uses chemical signatures and processes to open and shut infinite pathways, allowing electronic signals quicker and more efficient travel along nerves.

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Last week, the Europeans announced they are publically funding biologically inspired “chemical computer� development. They are only admitting to a public fund of about $2 million, but no doubt their budgets have plenty of $2,000 hammers and $3,000 toilet seats “much needed for national security� that will, somehow, find their budgeted funds being snuck through to the right labs.

The reason the EU announcement is important is because the Western world and China and India have all realized that computer capacity — specifically the growth of computer capacity — is the key to financial growth and success in the future. The countries that control this new breakthrough will, effectively, control the world.

Nothing has changed much. In Roman times, the catapult and the improved strength of their metal swords kept them the strongest force on earth. Today, America is still the strongest when it comes to computer development.

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What is no longer certain is whether we will remain there. And what is further worrying is that this chemical computer, if it achieves even 50 percent of the efficiency of the human brain, will be capable of vast leaps in calculations and systems’ control.

If you have to ask what it would control, you are forgetting that, even 25 years ago, you could not have thought of the iPhone, portable computers, satellite phones, smart cars, MRI and pretty much every aspect of your life that is dependent on the best computers of our day.

Now, turn that up 2,000 fold. Think beyond Star Trek. The watch on your wrist becomes the gateway to the Internet, is your phone, your video camera, heck, it may even do all your mundane thinking because, if it is as fast as your brain, your brain will shortly be able to use this “annex brain� as a tool without your needing to program it. You imagine it, it is possible.

The brave new world is still evolving. Whether we get the military to release its research, whether the EU takes the next public steps and beats us to market depends on our desire to remain evolutionally the fittest nation of all.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.