Hey, this is Andy Mills, and for today...

Just what are digital computers?

The computer.

Are they man-made monsters that perform mathematical miracles in millions of a second?

From where we sit today, it's actually kind of funny to look at how we were thinking and talking about the computer just decades ago.

Are they superhuman machines that can solve any kind of problem?

How mysterious they seemed to the general public.

No, nothing miraculous at all, nor monstrous.

The working parts are transistors, vacuum tubes, magnetic devices, and other electronic components.

But we've got to remember that the computer is still a relatively new normal in the world.

For example, in 1980, only 1% of Americans owned a computer.

Let that think in, 1%.

When the personal computer industry first got started, there was

robust discourse for many years about why an individual would even want a computer, let alone

need one. And of course, now it's almost impossible to think of what would happen to the global economy,

to our personal connections, to the very infrastructure of our modern society without these technological marvels.

But our story today is about how the computer itself may be about to take its most radical and bizarre step forward in its evolution.

And how that might prove to be even more transformational to the future of the human race.

Imagine opening up your computer, breaking it open, like unscrewing the back and looking

about the guts inside.

And instead of seeing, you know, wires and chips and hardware and things like that, you

see living brain tissue, human brain tissue, powering the computer.

...