Following from Friday's post on scientist's attempts to build a computer model of the Universe I came upon this New Scientist post about building a computer simulation of the Human brain:

"An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.

The 'Blue Brain' project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM's Blue Gene design.

The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness."

At first glance this of course seems preposterous, especially if you are of the opinion that the Human part of the brain is something inaccessible to science. Given modern technology's exponential improvements, and the 10 year life span the project has been given, it is by no means out of the question that this stupendous undertaking could be completed.

There goes a cliche that says there are more interconnections of neurons in the Human brain than there are atoms in the known Universe, numbers simply too high to picture and seemingly impossible to recreate. Where could computer technology be taking us over the next decade? When we have modeled the Human brain, maybe even glimpsed those first insights into the ever elusive consciousness, perception, the 'soul' then where do we go? Surely the next logical step, as tied in with increasing computing capacity, will be to create artificial minds that out-perform the human brain. Computers already whoop human-ass in terms of shear calculations per second, so when the actual processing power of these machines begins to outweigh our own by even a tiny amount our fast track to being out-evolved by our own technology will be underway.

My personal view of the Universe is intimately tied in with the evolution of consciousness. It took over 13 billion years of cosmic evolution for a system as complicated as the Human brain to evolve from the mass of hot gas created after the Big Bang. Now a sub-system of the Universe, i.e. the Human mind, is capable of probing the very fabric of truth that binds reality together. With every scientific advancement, every breakthrough in philosophical understanding we not only aid our own 'progress' towards the unknown barriers of reality that drive us, I believe we actually help realise the Universe. What good is a Universe without systems within it which bring it into focus?

"It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms - A physicist is the atom's way of knowing about atoms..." - George Wald

To branch off from the brain's amazing potential and possibly begin to design new forms of consciousness, through computer technology, we are bringing forth new realms of existence from the depths of the ever multiplicating branches of reality. Of course this sounds pure nonsense, science fiction, but if humans do survive the next century (let's face it, there's no better than a 50/50 chance of this happening) and pull themselves from the quagmire of self destruction we have wallowed in for thousands of years I truly believe that at least the spores cast off into the cosmos by humans will help realise a future reality no one alive today could possibly, in their wildest imaginations, have any conception of.

Categories: Science, Computers, Technology, News, Reality, Physics, Philosophy, Humanity, Future

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