Does Technology affect the size of our brains?

On the Futurelearn Course Introduction to Psychology I made the distinction between genetic development of the brain (how big it is) and the cultural development - where the culture is always changing generation by generation.

DB asked  I am guessing that the evolution of technology may also relate to our brains' size?

If you think about it modern technology means that we don’t have to use our brains so intensely as in the past. I was brought up “under the counter” in a newsagent and tobacconist’s shop and as a child enjoyed serving customers – and all sales were done in your head in old £sd money, no bar codes and computer tills to help. In fact the work of the average shop assistant has been significantly deskilled in my lifetime. 

A Simple Example of how CODIL works

J M asked "How would these symbiotic - easy to understand computers - look like? how would they work?"

The computer hardware would look like a conventional computer, and in fact any commercial system would probably combine both technologies. The difference is in the way you would interact with it.

The original idea (see The SMBP Story) related to a very large commercial sales contract program in 1967.  The workings can best be explained in terms of a very simple network model.

Imagine a board with a number of light bulbs on it - each light bulb represents a commercial concept such as CUSTOMER or PETROL - and some bulbs could also have numbers  associated with them. If a customer contract referred to a discount it might be written:

CUSTOMER = SMITH; PRODUCT = PETROL; 

QUANTITY >= 1000; DISCOUNT = 10%

This would indicate that the bulbs for CUSTOMER and SMITH were linked, as where the bulbs for PRODUCT and PETROL, etc. In addition there would be links between the linked pairs.

Similarly there would be a pricing table with statements such as:

PRODUCT = PETROL; QUANTITY >= 500; 

UNIT PRICE =  15

with the appropriate bulbs linked.

To Price a delivery the nodes equivalent to the following would be switched on:

CUSTOMER = SMITH; PRODUCT = PETROL; 

QUANTITY >= 1000

and the this would automatically turn on the lights for 

DISCOUNT = 10%  and UNIT PRice = 15

The important thing is that everything is done in terms of concepts the user can understand, and the system deduced what needs doing. The approach is application independent and can easily show the user what it is doing and why. Effectively it is a transparent system, where conventional computers are black boxes. 

In practice the experimental interpreters hold all the links in a table and for each input they automatically look up the relevant links. Instead of a very large pricing program which will price any sale, you have a table-lookup which - in effect - works out a purpose-build mini-program for each transaction. 

Papers on the Original CODIL System

A detailed paper is being drafted for this blog and will appear shortly

Why does CODIL differ from other computer languages

This query came up on a FutureLearn Course which read "Christopher, to be honest I don't think the world needs any more computer languages or most of the ones it already has for that matter"

The vast majority of computer languages, such as COBOL, Fortran, C, Java, etc. are designed to process information on a conventional stored program computer where the memory consists of numbered boxes which contain numbers . The numbers in the boxes may represent coded data (often several different formats), numeric addresses, or coded instructions. This approach was originally designed to handle a class of well-defined mathematical tasks which humans find difficult to do quickly and accuracy, so it is not surprising that modern computers are incomprehensible black boxes when viewed by the average human being. They were deliberately designed to do efficiently things which people are bad at doing.

CODIL uses a completely different memory structure which is based on a dynamic network which attempts to mimic the working of the brain's neural network. The aim is to produce a transparent information processor (rather than a black box) which is easy for the average human to understand and use for a range of potentially complex information processing tasks. It is particularly aimed at complex tasks where a dynamically flexible human interface is advantageous - and so fills the area where conventional computers are weakest.

In CODIL the array of numbered boxes which make up a conventional computer memory is replaced by a large number of nodes, where each node consists of an on/off switch and a label (which is for the benefit of the human user). The human user defines the names of the nodes and the wires linking the nodes.

Can you model for the impact of language, writing, etc. ???

Your Questions Answered

The Evolutionary Model of Intelligence in 200 words!

JS asked; "Can you model for the impact of language, writing, print, radio, TV and the internet?"

I am basically interested in modelling the flow of information within brains and, using a language, between human brains. It is important to note that the model is not concerned with the physical form of the decision making nodes or the messages. An eye is a decision making node which receives photons and converts them into messages to neurons in the brain. In the same way books, TVs and computer systems can be considered to be integral part of the overall network model. 

One of billions of possible complex information flow examples: The node “William Shakespeare” generated a message “Macbeth” which was sent to by the book to actor nodes living 400 years later – and the resulting performance ended up in your brain via a TV and your eye. 

My model is (at present) only an initial qualitative model – but the model shows how improved information tools can have an effect on the knowledge stored in the brains of modern humans. It is an open question whether the model could be developed to measure impact by, for instance, saying what percentage of a given individual’s knowledge came from the use of the internet.