Pavlov’s experiments showed that pathways in the memory of animals can be synthesized. Tolman showed that these pathways could become complex in scope, when they are made goal-oriented. This concept of animal memory can be applied and implemented for no-power storage of information – organic computer memory. Through the use of conditional reflex, simple memory “building blocks” can be created. These building blocks can be assembled to synthesize more complex memory systems...
Networks of mazes, multiple animals, or varieties of animals could all be utilized to construct increasingly elaborate systems. As animals become smaller, their range of operational building blocks becomes smaller and simpler, but the number that can be used becomes massive. (As the creatures become so small that they have no mnemonic capacity, or have no brains, the building blocks would become biochemical in nature, with reflexive responses occurring due to changes in biochemical conditions, e.g., pH, temperature, number of proteins, ion availability, electrochemical gradients, etc. – so-called “biochemical computing.”)
Clearly, animal brains are very dissimilar to computer chips, so a classical binary logic system, or a system with unit “building blocks” that are too simple, would be inefficient and difficult to implement in practice. But animal brains, like human brains, and unlike computers, are very good at certain tasks, such as visual recognition, spatial judgement, reflexive response to sensory stimulation, and so on. In other words, the most efficient unit operations would be complex. These organic memory systems would not, therefore, work best when applied to the kinds of applications for which computer memory works best.
