The Biologist of Computing

"Clearly, the organizing principle of the brain is parallelism. It's using massive parallelism. The information is in the connection between a lot of very simple parallel unit working together. So, if we built a computer that was more along that system of organization, it would likely be able to do the same kinds of things the brain does."

- Daniel Hillis

W. Daniel Hillis's interests in science and technology came from his parents. His father was an epidemiologist while his mother was very interested in mathematics, and both his parents went to great lengths to instill curiosity in these subjects. Hillis's curiosity and craftiness enhanced his experience with technology during his youth. His first real exposure to the world of digital computing was in the late 1960s when he had the chance to look at George Boole's An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) which outlined the principles of elementary Boolean algebra. After toying with these ideas, he eventually learned to program. In 1974, however, he entered MIT "determined to find out how the brain worked" planning to major in neurophysiology (192). At MIT, Hillis met Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy and fully discovered the vast world of computing and started working at MIT's Artificial Intelligence lab in the LOGO group on a project involving computer technologies that followed the evolutionary principle of emergence which states that "interacting agents will adapt, through a process of selection, a mechanism for survival" (193). Soon, Hillis' idea for the Connection Machine was born. In attempt to mimic the massive parallelism used by the brain, the Connection Machine was designed to be a computer made up of thousands of processors all linked together each with its own control and its own memory. The machine was connected, initiated, and set "free" to run in hopes to discover the emergence of new smarter technology from the pre-existing one. A perfect project for a lover of both biology and computing, the Connection Machine was the perfect project for Hillis, but it is clear that the Machine is only the beginning to our understanding of evolutionary trends in computing.