By now, you’ve probably heard the story about IBM simulating half a mouse brain using a supercomputer; it’s on New Scientist today, which means most of the MSM will be running it. This is an exciting development, for sure – the ability to accurately mimic the functional architecture of a brain is one of the crucial steps towards the Technological Singularity – but I feel obliged to point back to Jamais Cascio’s blog (where I first saw this story), which he has updated to make the point that the computer didn’t actually simulate a mouse’s mind, but instead ran a neural network that could theoretically support such a simulation. Even so, it’s an impressive feat, and an indicator of how quickly things are developing.