22nd February 2006, 2:00 PM
The mental capability has to be there though. Our brains handle much larger and more complicated calculations almost constantly. It is rather annoying that we can't coopt even a little bit of that for our own custom designed purposes...
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)