X-Message-Number: 14907
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 08:23:19 -0800
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Neuron imitation

Lee Corbin wrote in Message #14901:

> Thomas Donaldson wrote in Message #14891:

> > ... Even a little reading on just how neurons work makes me
> > wonder whether a computer in the present sense could really
> > imitate us at all well.
...
> Do you believe that it will never be possible ... to successfully
> imitate a person?  That is, even if humanity's total resources for
> the next billion years were dedicated to the project, it simply
> will never be possible...?

Joseph Kehoe posted the following URL in Message #14892:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_528000/528109.stm
> Scientists have produced the world's smallest transistor.... The
> 50-nanometer transistor - roughly 1/2000 the width of a human hair
> - is known as a "vertical" transistor because all of its
> components are built on top of a silicon wafer. Another key
> difference is that a conventional transistor has only one "gate,"
> which switches current on and off. The vertical transistor,
> however, resembles a rectangular block with a "gate" on two sides.

A question from the peanut gallery:  how big is a neuron?

We've gotten this far in 50 years; it seems to me that another
order of magnitude decrease in size and another order of magnitude
increase in complexity, and we should be able to simulate the
operation of a neuron in about the size of a neuron.  Never mind 
identity, or even connections between neurons; just operation of a
single neuron.

How far do we have to go?

Live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Kennita Watson          |  I vote Libertarian.
     |      Find out why.
http://www.kennita.com  |           http://www.lp.org/intro

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