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Human vs computer, which has more processing power?  To simply put, people think that human may be a lot slower than a computer since they like to think a computer can process math functions at light speed, and it’s true that computer is much faster in that sense, but is it really that a computer has more processing power?  After reading the article “Geeks Weigh In: Does a Human Think Faster Than a Computer?” — I’m agreeing with the author, Ryan Dube, that a human has more processing power than a computer.

A computer may know how to calculate the chess moves quite fast and in abundance of steps ahead a human chess player, but a computer can only do that and a few more things at the same time.  Let say a virus scanner suddenly scans the hard-drive for virus and a music software plays MP3, the computer will start to slow down eventually; to compensate the slowdown, one may add more RAM and upgrade from one core to dual core and quad core and multiple processors, but the limitation of to how many applications that can run at the same time is still clearly there although it’s depending on how heavy resource hogging each application requires.

Scientifically compare a human with a computer, one can say a human is much more sophisticated and has more processing power due to the subtle functions that a human performs throughout a human lifetime in seconds or more exact in milliseconds or even more exact in nanoseconds.  For examples, a human brain regulates heart beats, moves your muscles to move hands and feet and eyes and facial movements and internal organs’ movements, accepts external information such as sounds from all type of sources, processes external information such as languages and sounds and logics and the natures of the information at specific point in time and so on, and so much more — most of these can be done at the same time as long the functions aren’t in conflicting with each other.  Internal organs may have its own processors to process its own functions, an example would be the heart as it has its own way of regulating the heart beats in addition to the brain.  The eye’s retina has its own processing power, too.

Simply put, the things that a human does a computer cannot even if a computer maker adds more processors, and this is hold true for now.  Though one can argue if we add unlimited number of processor power to a computer, a computer can be faster and smarter than a human, but that argument will have to be waited for unknown amount of time since human technology is currently not capable of creating such a scary computer.

Collective number of computers from multiple places all over the world combine to create a super massive processing unit to process information and to calculate various things may be considered as having more processing power than a human, but that is not true either, because humans can communicate with each other just like computers can.  Sure, the information travel very fast over the Internet and arrive at a precise destination quite fast, but each computer still has to process the information (if the information is quite large, it will take a long time to process).  A human can process the information quite fast when a cell phone or video conference acts as the medium of which information could travel just as the information of a computer travels over telephone wires and air as wireless and fiber optic cables.  We can say that each human still has to slow down just like a computer when a human consumes large amount of data such as reading a large book, but remember this a human is doing countless other things at the same time while reading a book — those things computers of this age cannot yet do.  Can a computer thinks for itself, imagines things, dreams of things, lies to itself, heals itself physically besides the logistical calculations?  I bet you know the answer to that question already!