https://wiki.cas-group.net/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Serial_vs_Parallel 2026-07-19T17:07:07Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.43.8 https://wiki.cas-group.net/index.php?title=Serial_vs_Parallel&diff=193&oldid=prev 2008-10-02T20:45:28Z

<p>New page: :The hardware of the brain is fundamentally parallel, like that :of the Edinburgh machine. And it runs software designed to create :an illusion of serial processing: a serially processin...</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>:The hardware of the brain is fundamentally parallel, like that <br /> :of the Edinburgh machine. And it runs software designed to create <br /> :an illusion of serial processing: a serially processing virtual <br /> :machine riding on top of parallel architecture. <br /> ::- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p. 280, Endnotes to chapter 4<br /> <br /> :Computers were originally just supposed to be number-crunchers, <br /> :but now their number-crunching has been harnessed in a thousand <br /> :imaginative ways to create new virtual machines, such as video <br /> :games and word processors, in which the underlying number-crunching <br /> :is almost invisible, and in which new powers seem quite magical. <br /> :Our brains, similarly, weren&#039;t designed (except for some very <br /> :recent peripheral organs) for word processing, but now a large <br /> :portion perhaps even the lion’s share of the activity that takes <br /> :place in adult human brains is involved in a sort of word processing: <br /> :speech production and comprehension, and the serial rehearsal and <br /> :rearrangement of linguistic items, or better, their neural surrogates. <br /> :And these activities magnify and transform the underlying hardware <br /> :powers in ways that seem (from the outside) quite magical.<br /> ::- Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained, 1992</div>

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