I’m currently reading a book by Neal Stephenson called SnowCrash. Aside from being awesome it posits some ideas that I’ve been mulling over for a very long time, one of which is that we do not think at a base level in English, only in our higher brain functions do we use our internal monologue. If this is fact, then is there some kind of “machine code” for the brain?

Machine code is the term used in computing for the raw code that runs on a piece of hardware. When you write software it’s in a language, a device independent way of communicating with whatever it is you’re communicating with (usually a chip). If everyone had to start from scratch each time new chips were brought out, it’d be a bit horrible, which is where a compiler comes in.

A compiler takes your language and turns it into something your hardware understands.

This is much, as I suspect, like how the brain processes information.

Everyone has a differing perception of the world around them. This is because there is so much data to take in constantly that the brain filters it so we are not overwhelmed and unable to function. Have you ever had that feeling where you’ve heard a word for the first time, found out what it means and then over a period of days it crops up everywhere? It’s not magic, that word was always around you, you’ve just chosen to notice it at this point.

Have you ever been annoyed by something a partner’s suddenly started doing and had them tell you that they’ve always done the annoying thing? More often than not it’s the same thing — they have always done this but you’ve only just noticed.

These filters alter your perception. They can also be altered by mood, chemicals, stress and others around you. If you believe the world to be a cruel and uncaring place, it’s because this is what you see around you. If you believe the world to be gorgeous and lovely and full of joy and opportunity, it’s because this is what you see around you. There’s enough pain and joy in the world for everyone, your perception moulds what you see of situations.

The reason we need these filters to process everything we see is that the language we use is what we use for our thoughts. It takes more brainpower to translate from our language into something our brain understands and vice versa than it does to recognise things.

If you learn something instinctively, you’ll find yourself doing something that, if you take time to examine everything you are doing, you cannot do. Take riding a bike — whilst doing this you are adjusting your balance, keeping an eye on the road, powering your legs, etc. This all happens instinctively when we’ve mastered cycling, it’s almost like there’s no thought required.

There *is* thought required, but it’s not part of your internal monologue. Your brain isn’t saying “must turn slightly left” it just does it. Fast.

The brain is very visual. It stores patterns, not words. What if you could access those patterns directly, bypassing your perception filters? You’d have a very very fast and awesome way to communicate.

The brain changes though as it grows and learns — this is the tricky part.

In SnowCrash, Neil Stevenson suggests that hackers, due to the nature of how they think of code, have similar enough brains for an image to access this visual centre of the brain in the same way, effectively allowing a person to hack into the brain.

I don’t think it’s that simple, I suspect that everyone has a slightly different brain and so a slightly different way of recognising and storing patterns that is unique to that brain. And that as a brain grows and learns it restructures itself according to the data it uses the most. But at its core there are a few patterns that are recognisable enough inside the mind to be shared between people.

Imagine the speed of communication with devices if we could manage to ignore lang