On Computing - The Philosophical Gap Between Computer and Medical Science
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: A personal history of the home computer read as a question about where thinking happens. The essay traces the machine from a Windows 3.1 desktop with a copy of Encarta on it back through the transistor, the integrated circuit, and the first microprocessor, then maps the parts of that machine onto the parts of a head — the drive as long-term memory, working memory as what is held right now, and the processor as the third thing standing between them. The mapping is run at full extension and then tested until it breaks, which it does at exactly one place: the separation of memory from processing, a feature the machine has and the brain does not. What survives the break is a smaller and better-attested claim, in the sense the extended-mind literature gives it — that the computer has become genuinely load-bearing for human thought. The essay closes on a missing indefinite article spoken from the surface of the moon, and on the difference between one man and mankind.
Author: Johnson, Jamison
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7166180252