(How) Are Minds (Un)Like Computers?

As I sit and await a scintillating evening at a school budget meeting, I'm doing a bit of surfing (yay wireless!), and have happened across two bits of intellectual flotsam worth perusing...

1. A philosophical and scientifically-informed discussion for the intelligent layperson in The New Atlantis magazine.

2. On a (we hope) unrelated note, a provocative opinion piece from the Standpoint online magazine about the growth of the culture of 'nice' in public education, and the consequences thereof. One of my favorite paragraphs comes near the beginning:

It is also hard to understand one's own time because the realities come encrusted within such a distracting array of circumstance. The Romans lived through the long and peaceful reign of Augustus, barely recognising, until Tiberius and Caligula, how, with the most delicate republican tactfulness in shuffling offices, he had equipped them, if not with a king, certainly with a master. Under Augustus, they had even developed, without quite realising it, some of the sycophancy needed to play the new game of despotism. Even changes of this kind in oneself can be hard to recognise, except in hindsight.