I’m not sure how, but I got to thinking about how humans are like computers in a lot of ways while I was driving home from school for lunch. I typed up a list of comparisons and will now quickly cut and paste them here and get the hell out of my house before I’m late for class.
I’m sure this has probably been done before by somebody, somewhere, but I just wondered what y’all thought of these and if you had criticisms or additions.
When a human receives information (data), it is immediately stored in short-term memory (Level 1 and 2 cache) for easy access. After a few minutes, the memory is still present and easily retrievable, but not totally fresh in the human’s mind (RAM). Later, when the person goes to sleep (computer is shut down), a certain percentage of the information will be lost. This percentage varies based on the amount of recall ability the human has, and whether or not the person has actively attempted to memorize the information and commit it to long-term memory (hard disk).
If the information hasn’t been used (data accessed) in a long time, the human tends to relegate it to something loosely analogous to a tape backup. When the information is brought up, the person knows he has heard it before, but needs something to jog his mind. It will take him some time to get it straight (time it takes to load data from tape). After a long while, the human’s tape backup will decay and demagnetize and he will forget the information altogether.
Portable storage (floppy disks) comes in the form of a pen and paper with which to write one’s thoughts (word processing) or draw pictures (create images and save them with an AutoSave function that stores changes several times a second). The human can erase (undo) changes with an eraser (eraser tool) or white out (painting over the image).
Of course, images can be stored in a human’s short and long-term memories too. A fleeting glimpse of an object produces an incomplete image in the person’s mind (very pixelated image with a small file size), while staring at something for a long period of time can render vivid recollections to long term-memory (bloated GIF hogging up space on the hard drive).
The human can learn an extensive variety of tasks (install and run programs). He can switch back and forth between two or more tasks at once (pre-emptive multi-tasking).
Printing capabilities come pre-packaged with Human OS, and can be upgraded through practice and training. Hands can serve as low speed, high resolution, impact printers, usable on any size paper and on other materials. Accuracy is limited, especially when using the non-dominant (backup) hand. Ink cost, however, is very low compared to ink jet and toner cartridges.
