Fergus Cassidy

Fish and chips good for the brain

I'VE just finished reading a book called The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years, published two years ago and only now getting around to (so little time, too much... etc etc). The editor John Brockman posed the question via email to what he describes as a wide range of scientists, philosophers and entrepreneurs and the book contains about a 100 responses.

The diversity of the responses was fascinating. The Indo-Arabic counting system, the pill, the electric motor, the basket, printing press, the battery, the city, the human ego. Looking down through the list of nominated inventions, it's clear that there was no 'winner', although computing in its broadest sense got more than one nod. If I had to plump for one though, computers would be it and I'll tell you why.

In the story of how human beings originated and developed, the role of tools has had a decisive influence on what happened next. Humans have invented and used tools to adapt and survive in sometimes very harsh and foreboding climates (such as shopping on Christmas Eve).

I'd go with the computer, however, because it could bring change to the world on a par, or even greater than, some of the most important inventions already have. Although up to now computing has greatly affected scientific knowledge, it's still could be early days for gauging the impact of computers on the way we live.

I see the computer as a tool, but a tool for homo sapiens greatest asset - the brain. The biological and physical development of human beings over hundreds of thousands of years was evolutionary. Adapting and surviving or more accurately adapting to survive. For example, changing from a vegetable diet to a meat one due to climate change or whatever, saw dramatic changes in the structure of the jaw bones and teeth. The brain, however, is surrounded by a thick skull (some thicker than others) and has greater physical restrictions placed on its evolvement.

Computers provide the tool for the brain to free itself from its confines. It might well be that evolution might bring us there in the end anyway, but computers bring speed to the process. Before computing became pervasive, aliens were usually described and drawn with heads bigger than their bodies. The assumption was that if aliens has greater intelligence, then they must have bigger heads.

If computers are tools then of course they can be used to harm and destroy. Developing weapons of mass destruction can be laid at the door of homo sapiens who used the tools for that purpose. We seem to believe that certain types of technology are unacceptable but are prepared to tolerate, or embrace, others. The fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people have been maimed, seriously injured or killed by automobiles hasn't put the brakes on or stopped us calling cars names like Njoy.

My other favourite example is airplanes, where technological schizophrenia really takes off. Travelling at 400mph, 30,000 feet off the ground in a sardine tin doesn't seem to bother us in the slightest. So much so, that we watch movies, eat drink and sleep and even do a bit of shopping.

We tend to pick and choose when we suspend disbelief in anything to do with technology. We believe that it's fine to get into bed on a winter's night and sleep with the electric blanket on. Or put a nail in the fuse board. Or use the hairdryer in the bathroom. We seem to overlook most of the dangers associated with technologies we use, except for computers.

Maybe it's because we've mastered most of the day-to-day technologies, except for the damned video recorder. When we ride in a car or a plane, we don't care how they work or why. We only care if they don't work and then usually because we feel cheated or ripped off in some way and take a stand as a consumer.

But we still hold computers up to a much higher level of suspicion. Maybe it was the sci-fi films or the mad scientists plotting to destroy the world unless $50m was deposited in a Swiss bank account. Or maybe it's still the newness of it all. Who knows?

But we have this brain-tool now and like a lot of other technologies, there are risks and dangers. But there are also survival needs. Computers can crunch numbers and right now that's necessary for survival.

Take the SARS outbreak. Computers are being used to speed up the search for the viruses composition and mutation. Extreme weather is another example where accurate predictions can save millions of lives. We could use our brain power to achieve the same objective, but there would be a lot less of us around to care how we did it.

But arguably the greatest potential for change that computers can bring is with information. Machines that can gather, store and disseminate with a capacity and speed that the brain can never match.

Information on its own is useless. But drawing links and relationships between stranded bits of information is a task well up to the brain. It just needs to find that information first. Having this ability to draw conclusions and realise a fuller picture from the pieces of an information jigsaw might in turn affect the evolution of the brain itself.

It's only recently that science is beginning to understand that the human brain is not a fixed entity from the moment of birth but is subject to change from stimuli throughout its life. Information might well be part of that stimulus.

Just as well then that another great invention is also readily available.

The aspirin.

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The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years is edited by John Brockman. The paperback edition is published by Phoenix in association with Simon & Shuster. ISBN: 0 75381 128 6