UCSB Freshman Seminar “What is computing?”, Fall 2016

Some questions posted by the class after Lecture 7, November 8, 2016

• Does biological computing stem from the idea that all of our responses to the environment are effects of causes registered in our bodies, thus making us living, subjective kinds of turing machines?
• How do we know if a biological structure constitutes a computer?
• How can we teach a machine to identify an animal in a picture?
• What are the differences between the Von Neumann Architecture and Harvard Architecture?
• Is it possible that the soon-to-be-built bio-engineering building and the subsequent study of bio-engineering will be able to create biological computers out of biological components? Is that even a field that the new building will be grounds to? Also, does it make sense that Windows and other OSes are more "complex" than each of us are?
• Could there ever be a computer with such powerful electric signals that could succeed human intelligence?
• Is it even possible to create something like a brain?
• Can the concept of consciousness/consciousness itself be programmed? How would we go about doing that?
• In what ways synthesize a biological and mechanical computer? Would prosthetics count in this category?
• If we knew more about the brain would it be directly translated to a computer model?
• Why is the human brain a computer but other animal brains are not? What about bacteria with no brains? Is it because we are the only mammals known to have a conscience?
•  Are humans the biological computers that share the most similarities with computers? 
• Is "plastic circuitry" possible, to put into computers? If we were to assemble a network of these plastic circuits, placing a circuit as a neuron one at a time to replicate an existing human brain, would it recreate that person's mind?