Machine Minds

If the human brain were so simple That we could understand it, We would be so simple That we couldn't. Inside that head of yours is something magnificent. A processing unit so complex, so mysterious, that even those who have dedicated decades to its study have barely scratched the surface. An organ so dynamic and interconnected, some have called it the most complex system in the known universe. The study of the brain, and that which it confers onto humankind -- the gifts of intelligence and consciousness, have captured the human imagination since times of old. In some sense, replicating this process in an external setting has been a deep-rooted goal of humankind for a long time. A mind made from a machine, not from flesh. Before modernism, romanticism, before all the isms that have come to define our modern age, there was the will to understand who we are, and what mad force of the universe compelled it to create, within itself, a small and insignificant being capable of observing it.