The more you read about the human brain, the more you realize that self-awareness is, at best, one tool in a big box of survival mechanisms. Yet more proof: the regions of the brain associated with self-awareness are turned off when you concentrate.

A research team in Toronto has created a material that when painted on glass capillaries emits coherent light. This material could be used to form tiny optical switches in optical computers.

Sound recognition software can analyse audio in ways that our hearing cannot. But human hearing has the edge in other skills – discriminating one audio source from a background of many for example, like a conversation at a loud party. Which is why engineers at the UK’s Newcastle University are developing a computer model of the ‘auditory midbrain’, the lump of grey matter that deals with the way we perceive sound. The results could enable voice-commanded robotics and a new generation of hearing aids.

Tech-heads and SF writers have been talking about human-machine interfaces for years. In a weird new twist on this idea, military researchers are developing just such a system – but one that uses the tongue to connect the brain to the external signals. This device is being used to allow deep sea divers a 360 degree field of view and sonar-like information about their environment, and there is work beginning on an infra-red version for soldiers.

What does the future hold for computing? Why we need only look at the present as viewed from the lens of the past. Easy, right? [waxy]