Stream Of Consciousness Blog #2

Thoughts flow from my mind to my fingers where they are translated into keypresses . These keypresses are then translated into electronic signals where they are sent wirelessly to a receiver which is connected to the computer.

The computer reads these signals and at the hardware level generates a keypress for the operating system. The operating system then tells the current application that a keypress has occurred and causes the behavior of typing out the words you're reading. Of course there's more beyond that. There's a graphical interface which has to take the concept of each letter and display it properly. The data is stored on a memory chip in the machine as binary information, on or off. The processor divides it's time between what I am doing and what the rest of the computer is doing. This happens so quickly I don't even percieve that I'm not the only important thing on the computer. When I publish this post out to the internet it will go through an unknown number of cables, routers and servers.. it will be translated from electricity to information encoded on light pulses, back into electricity and then stores on a hard disk somewhere as minute fluctuations in the magnetic field.

By reading this you've already done some other amazing things. You've sent requests through the same infrastructure, electricity to light waves etc... the remote machine has run code telling it to read this post from the hard disk translating those magnetic fluctuations back into words, and then presenting them to you.

Here's where the real fun begins. During your reading of this post your brain has been taking information from your past on language and physics and your knowledge of me, and putting it all together in an experience which you now realize you are having. A self awareness of self awareness. That's the difference between the computer and us. We sometimes realize what we do. The machine, through human programming, can abstract away layers.

As a developer I don't deal with all the items I've told you. Programmers deal with information in a different way than the normal human brain does. If you saw the code for this page it would appear to have nothing to do with your experience of it... I believe our existance is similar. If we knew the true nature of it then it would appear alien and unrelated to our actual experience.

In fact our own brains operate on a level which is abstract compared to our experience. Electrical fluctuations tell our muscles to move. Our eyes are sensors for light which our brain then uses to create the illusion of sight. Our ears sense vibrations which our brain then turns into sound. Your entire body is simply a vessel for this type of sensory illusion which we've all come to accept as reality. If we knew the true underlying reality it might be a wee bit overwhelming for us.

When I look at the world, and the universe I can't help but be amazed that all the items we look at are created from the basic building blocks of atoms and molecules. Even the letters you're looking at on your LCD or CRT are molecules or atoms which are being manipulated by electricity, which itself is merely the movement of electrons through a string of atoms which have available places for them.

Well, that's all I've got time for today. See you all on Monday.