Christ, I hope not.

No. We do not intend to reintroduce SOTA at this point.

That's a paradoxon.

For now... But I'm working on that.

Machines can do specific behaviors faster (calculate numbers, sort discreet bits of data, etc.). However, there is one thing that the human mind has over machines in spades. That is the ability to make coorelations between different things. For example, if I mention a glass of juice and a cell phone, all of us could think of a vast number of things they have in common. Computers are limited by the foresight of their programming.

Mark

(See there IS a use for a Doctorate in Psychology after all...)

EDIT: I'm sure someone will want to point out that, at some point, the programming will be perfected. The problem is, our minds constantly evolve with new bits of information and new relationships built every second. Until we make a learning computer that doesn't rely on additional programming, it will never be as good.

Ghost in the Shell the manga has networked pigs as a bio computer.

In our SR game we've encountered cat nodes. They're good for storage and processing but they're uber creepy. I don't want my commlink staring at me.

Actually computers can be really good at this as well. For example if you have titanic datasets, and you want to find all the relationships between two people, this is quite possible and quite effective (Like, they lived at the same house 2 years ago, went to the same school during these periods etc.)

Edit: I actually imagine that these technologies would be the bane of shadowrunners - say you have these two descriptions, the security types will find that they match these SINs (even if they are fake) and those two people went to this restaurant and ordered food at that table. The other 3 people at that table where etc, etc, etc.


However, that basically comes back to what computers are good at: Performing operations on large functional datasets. What they are bad at is dealing with ambiguity or large search spaces. (Note: The search space of all commercial transactions in LA at which perp 1 was present in the last week is probably very small compared to the number of movies in a chess game)

This is why computers are great at checkers, good at chess and really terrible at Go.

Sorry, I have to step in here.

First off, the part that was correct: Synapses are a chemical transmitter and yes, they're slower than the "electric" action potential that travels across a nerve cell.

The problem bit: Okay, nerves do use "electricity", but not in the same way that wires do. There isn't a wave of electricity moving down a nerve axon in the same way that it moves across a wire. Action potentials move by chemical gates on the surface of the cell opening, which changes the voltage. They do this in response to the voltage change adjacent to them. It's like "the wave" If a nerve cell (including the axon) is a baseball stadium, then each person is an ion gate. When each gate/person sees the ones next to them going "WOO!", then they go "WOO!" as well, and in that way a voltage can travel along the surface of the cell. And they travel at speeds of 10-100 m/s (depending on a lot of boring things).

One more clarification, that makes the quoted statement not 100% incorrect: Long nerve axons designed to transmit over long distances (like in your spinal cord) have what's called a myelin sheath. That's insulating cells that wrap around the axon. Because of the insulation, the area under that cell behaves in a much more wire-like fashion, with only the bits between the cells doing the "WOO!" wave. That speeds propagation up A LOT, but unfortunately it's already included in my 10-100 m/s range above.