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Building Brainlike Computers
newtronic clues us to an article in IEEE Spectrum by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm Computing), titled Why can't a computer be more like a brain? Hawkins brings us up to date with his latest endeavor, Numenta. He covers progress since his book On Intelligence and gives details on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), which is a platform for simulating neocortical activity. Programming HTMs is different — you essentially feed them sensory data. Numenta has created a framework and tools, free in a "research release," that allow anyone to build and program HTMs.
Nobody is trying to copy it. They're trying to design it to have all the benefits the human brain has that allow us to work on things like this, but remove all of the features that don't work. Basically, we're trying to design the brain that god would have designed if he existed and actually designed it. =)
So, your saying that just because its complex, it can't be done?
Think about that for a moment, if only "god" could make it, then he would be breaking his own laws of nature, physics, quantium physics, and such. This is because every child, quite literally, makes his own brain, through growth. When you are in the womb, your cells split and become specilized and eventually make a structure known as a brain.
We've proven that we can change a creature's basic DNA, to make it different than it was, to make it grow up to be something different, all we're doing is re-inventing a different kind of brain by using an existing example as a model.
So, before you go off and read your king james edition of the bible, assuming your one of those blind-eyed, deaf-eared christians from the bible belt (and ooh boy, if you ever did any "real" research on the history of that thing you would know why so many people are becoming atheists), try using that brain you built yourself.