Some of the hurdles that stand in the way of fabricating a distributed computer mind are being overcome by building the network of computers inside one box. This deliberately compressed distributed computing is also known as parallel computing, because the thousands of computers working inside the supercomputer are running in parallel. Parallel distributed computing excels in perception, visualization, and simulation. Parallelism handles complexity better than traditional supercomputers made of one huge, incredibly fast serial computer. But in a parallel supercomputer with a sparse, distributed memory, the distinction between memory and processing fades.
Memory becomes an reenactment of perception, indistinguishable from the original act of knowing.
Both are a pattern that emerges from a jumble of interconnected parts.