Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
There exists the possibility of designing a polymer matrix in which polymer
fragments could serve as one of the components of the chemical reaction occurring
in a reaction-diffusion system
.
In this case, systems with long-term memory can be developed. For example,
when inhibiting a photosensitive reaction by radiation in some fragments of the
medium and carrying out the reaction in the remaining fragments of the polymer
matrix, the component associated with the matrix will be depleted only in dark
areas. After repeated use of the system, these areas will turn out to be not active, i.e.,
they will preserve the memory of the previous process.
I would like to emphasize that these examples are only a part of the opportunities
afforded by the formation of reaction-diffusion systems based on polymer matrices.
The rapid development of this technique will undoubtedly expand the experimental
opportunities, particularly in the design of advanced multilayer systems.
8.2.4 The Brain and the Reaction-Diffusion Computer
As mentioned above, one of the main objectives of this topic is to tell about what
really is today's incarnation of the biological principles of information processing.
Naturally, the most weighty arguments in their favor are the experimental works
performed in recent years, in fact over the last decade. It becomes clear, even on the
basis of these first timid attempts that biological principles are not a system of some
scholastic reasoning, but rather a practically oriented concept that is in the process
of development and the capabilities of which are far from exhausted.
Therefore, an important question arises—what are the limits to information
processing capabilities of devices built on biological principles? What is their
possible role in the prospective future system of computing and information-logical
tools?
In order to try to find the answer to this question, let us return to the 1990s of the
last century.
In the late 1980s one of the leading theoreticians in the field of informatics,
Michael Arbib, made a proposal to expand the concept of computation, so that it
organically included the “style” of information processing used by the human brain.
In his article “The Brain as a metaphor of sixth generation computing,” he wrote:
“
Этот стиль основан на постоянном совместном взаимодействии систем
,
активность
которых
выражается
как
взаимодействие пространственн
-
о
-
временных образов в многоуровневой системе нейронов
.”
The remarkable features of the Arbib's approach were that:
The brain is a computer oriented toward action. This is reflected by the fact that
the system constituted by a human, an animal, or a robot must be able to
correlate the internal actions with the interactions with the environment so as
to build an “internal model” of the world.
