The Living Brain

An utterly fascinating book about brain research in the first part of the 20th century. The most engaging chapters for me were those about the Machina Speculatrix, or "turtles" that Walter designed to behave like mechanical neurons. The research and engineering that led to the development of the Speculatrix delves deep into thinking about how people and machines, motivated by goals, acquire information about the world around them and then process that information, which then feeds back into new learning and behavioral choices.

Readers will notice many connections to Cybernetics research (e.g., Wiener, Beer, Pask, Ashby) and some tasty speculation at the end of the book about the possibilities for delegating menial brain activity to show more mechanical systems, thus freeing the brain to take a leap forward in development by an order of magnitude similar to what is thought to have happened with the development of agriculture. show less