The Brain vs. The Computer: Similarities and Differences. The brain uses
chemicals to transmit information; the computer uses
electricity. Even though electrical signals travel at high speeds in the
nervous system, they travel even faster through the wires in a computer. ... Computer memory grows
by adding computer chips.
Throughout
history, people have compared the brain to different inventions. In the past,
the brain has been said to be like a water clock and a telephone switchboard.
These days, the favorite invention that the brain is compared to is a computer.
Some people use this comparison to say that the computer is better than the
brain; some people say that the comparison shows that the brain is better than
the computer. Perhaps, it is best to say that the brain is better at doing some
jobs and the computer is better at doing other jobs. We now take the ten top functions and
how computers hold up vs. brain in each of them. We will see that computers already win easily
in two of them. There are four areas in which
computers have been able to catch up in the last decade and are fairly close or even slightly ahead. Finally,
there are four
areas in which human brains are still holding their own, among other things because we don’t really understand how
they work in our own brains.
