Wizards of Greater Oz
To my mind, Ray Bolger's role as the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz stands out more than any other performance (even Judy Garland's). His song and dance rendition of "If I only had a brain" is a real high point in the movie for me. More to the point, the scarecrow, Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all journey to Oz's Emerald City to ask The Wizard for things they think they need to complete their life (brain, way home, heart, and courage).
All of us in the high-tech industry are wizards of greater Oz. We labor to produce artifacts that we think will help complete the lives of the people on this planet (light, heat, food, transportation, entertainment, etc.). To do this, we've increasingly relied on processors, particularly microprocessors, to provide the "brains" of the electronic gadgets we develop. As the head of The Microprocessor Report, I and my colleagues often wrote about new and more "powerful" microprocessors that various companies developed to provide ever-increasing abilities to the new products of the tech industry.
The word "powerful" applied to even today's microprocessors is laughable. My cat's brain has more processing power than Intel's finest von Neumann machine and it doesn't need upwards of 100W to operate either. As an algorithmic-processing, image-recognizing, rule-generating device, the brains of most animals far outclass and outdistance today's simple silicon wonders.
What leads me to this topic today is Dean Takahashi's article in the March 24 San Jose Mercury News about a small company in Menlo Park run by former PDA gurus Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinski ("Numenta works to develop brain-like computing," requires free subscription). Hawkins has been funding brain research at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute in Menlo Park for several years and wrote a book last year titled On Intelligence detailing his theories on how the human brain works. Essentially, Hawkins believes that the brain works like a huge, deeply hierarchical memory. Each stage of the hierarchy is responsible for part of the decision making.
Hawkin's company Numenta intends to move these theories into practice. To that end, there's a software simulation already available. The products are in the future, to be harnessed by us Wizards.
All of us in the high-tech industry are wizards of greater Oz. We labor to produce artifacts that we think will help complete the lives of the people on this planet (light, heat, food, transportation, entertainment, etc.). To do this, we've increasingly relied on processors, particularly microprocessors, to provide the "brains" of the electronic gadgets we develop. As the head of The Microprocessor Report, I and my colleagues often wrote about new and more "powerful" microprocessors that various companies developed to provide ever-increasing abilities to the new products of the tech industry.
The word "powerful" applied to even today's microprocessors is laughable. My cat's brain has more processing power than Intel's finest von Neumann machine and it doesn't need upwards of 100W to operate either. As an algorithmic-processing, image-recognizing, rule-generating device, the brains of most animals far outclass and outdistance today's simple silicon wonders.
What leads me to this topic today is Dean Takahashi's article in the March 24 San Jose Mercury News about a small company in Menlo Park run by former PDA gurus Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinski ("Numenta works to develop brain-like computing," requires free subscription). Hawkins has been funding brain research at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute in Menlo Park for several years and wrote a book last year titled On Intelligence detailing his theories on how the human brain works. Essentially, Hawkins believes that the brain works like a huge, deeply hierarchical memory. Each stage of the hierarchy is responsible for part of the decision making.
Hawkin's company Numenta intends to move these theories into practice. To that end, there's a software simulation already available. The products are in the future, to be harnessed by us Wizards.
posted by Steve Leibson at
10:16 AM
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