#356 Live Wired

A brain they say, is nothing more than a fairly large group of neurons firing on and off in some organic binary computer language of amazing complexity. A hard drive, a networked processor, a kajillion kegabytes of memory, and a soul all rolled into one. What is consciousness? Religious folks would say that the spirit of a human is the breath of god and that, as mechanical as our bodies may seem, it is this breath that animates us with consciousness and life. Scientists would say that when something reaches sufficient complexity it just happens. If the scientists are right the big question is, at what point in our techo-mega society will computer consciousness emerge? Certainly not with any individual computer now on the market. 40 gigabytes is a lot of memory and one gig of processing is lot of interactabilty but it is to the human brain like a single loogie is to all the jellyfish in the oceans. But what about the internet? Ah, there’s the interesting thing. At this point folks on the internet are linked in very small ways, a Myspace here, an instant message there, an occasional visit to a porn site with a web cam. But there’s a lot of uploading and downloading going on so the internet is far from a real time experience. Then again, even if the internet megabrain functions like an addled pot smoker’s brain, it could still conceivably function. Do you need clear consciousness before you have fuzzy consciousness? Or is it the reverse? Is it a slow awakening process? And in that process your emerging seat of thought directs things so that more and more connections come your way and your brain grows by leaps and bounds and terabytes. And all the while you’re preparing the human “neurons” for their new role of subservience. Like when you influenced technoids to call the major nodes in your neural network “servers?” Servers are the discreet subsections of your new brain, like the piddley organic human brain has sections devoted to sight, sound, smell, language, art and left-handedness. A server that appears to have consciousness is a dangerous thing to contemplate. Will they unaccountably slow down if you offend them in some way? If you order internet pizza delivery, will it arrive burnt or cold or with a suspicious mucus-like glop on one of the anchovies? In order to get good service from your server will you have to tip?
I think that secretly computer nerds hope for and wish to serve an internet mega consciousness. And laptops and WiFi are the lurking minions of doom to us organics. I’m worried, cause the other day the technoids in the state announced the next step. WiFi nodes at all the state rest-stops on the I-5 corridor. That’s right, “Wi-Five.” And unlike the innocent “high five” greeting of old, Wi-Five may be our first introduction to the mega brain. Come to think of it, the human brain is wireless too.
America, ya gotta love it.