From the Palm to the Brain

Jeff Hawkins is probably the person most responsible for the success of PDAs today, being the original technical vision behind the Palm Pilot and Handspring. But he’s also had a lifelong interest in the workings of the human mind, stemming from a mid-1980s incident at home. And unlike some very rich people who’ve put money into scientific inquiries of personal interest, Hawkins is actually doing original work himself: he has developed the beginings of a theory suggesting that the brain works by anticipating and completing patterns. Cool stuff, eh?

At lunch I discussed Hawkins’ idea with a friend. We digressed a little bit but he brought up an interesting point. Evolution seems to have attempted an optimization in the nature of our brains, trading off the ability to learn from the environment (external stimulus) against speed of response. Accordingly during the first dozen years of life, when human children are most likely to have parental support and protection, brains are very malleable and open to learning; consider, for example, how much quicker children learn a new language than do adults. After that age, humans (until the Industrial Revolution came along) are more or less able to handle themselves and the brain becomes hardwired (my friend used the analogy of an EEPROM burning in a PROM around that age). Interestingly, most cultures’ coming of age ceremonies such as Jewish bar mitzvah and Christian confirmation take place at age 12 or 13.