CSPAN
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I was watching C SPAN, because, you know, I'm a geek groupie or something. Anyway, I was watching a Democratic Representative give his lone voice of dissent on a bill that would clarify a law passed in 1991. Way back then, around the time my son was discovering his toes, Congress passed legislation that created research funding for advanced computers. Now they want to clarify where our tax dollars should go.
I have no problem with this, and neither does Mr. Lone Voice of Dissent. He just wanted to throw in a line asking researcher to think about how to deal with self-aware computers, before such self-awareness becomes reality.

He specifically referenced DARPA, and said they were working toward a computer that could think, learn, and reflect on it's self.
You can read about DARPA's mission here. I'm too lazy to troll all around their site. Their main mission statement doesn't say anything about making a self-aware computer.

But it got me thinking... We as people take our bodies for granted. We might think of ourselves as organic machines, but it rarely occurs to us to compare ourselves to computers. So think about this:

We are covered with data receptors, both inside and out. An unimagineable amount of data constantly pours into our brains. Stuff we never think about. Think about just your skin. Your skin alone feels the seat your sitting in, the air around you, every place where your body presses against itself, every drop of sweat, even the light sheen of oil on your nose. In addition, your skin is constantly testing the ambient moisture and temperature around you. And that's just the beginning.

Consider that you have multiple receptors sending this data, not just one. Each one sends data packets multiple times per second. And your brain deals with it all. It takes in all that data, makes decisions, gives orders; and once in a while it flags something for you to actually notice. That's when you decide to scratch an itch, or shift your position in the chair.
Amazing.

Sorting a genome seems simple by comparison.