
World’s Total CPU Power: One Human Brain - gaiusparx
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/world-computer-data/
======
Smerity
I find this both article stunningly interesting and also somewhat
misleading...

I've know of a fair amount of information theory but never thought about the
fact we can use that to say that "a 6 square-cm newspaper image is worth a
1,000 words" by applying the idea of optimal encoding to both and working out
the information content. It's also interesting to think that many people
consider AI and data compression as highly related fields as to optimally
compress data it's generally thought that you need a thorough understanding of
the data.

The misleading part imho is the title of the article. It's in reference to the
statement "the 6.4*1018 instructions per second that ... general-purpose
computers in 2007 (are equivalent to) ... the maximum number of nerve impulses
executed by one human brain per second". I wouldn't consider those two equal.
A more apt comparison would be something along the lines of the number of
transistors triggered per second, putting computers back onto a more
reasonable playing field. Admittedly though computers are still so far away
from the computation ability of the human mind that this is really a nitpick.

