Marco Palombi

Leaving Milan

This is not the first time, always came back. Maybe this time is different, maybe not!

Mind-wandering seems to have evolved from walking

I walk when I really want to concentrate and think about new ideas. And there is a reason why I do that: it seems that I am actually using the same brain systems to walk and think. Intuitively when we describe how we remember, we use verbs such as, travel

What I like about Bitcoin and my personal note!

Bitcoin was created to decentralize money and will probably be used to achieve decentralized trust with group authority. Defining rules, and making sure they are not tampered with, is what well established organizations do: notaries, lawyers, judges and many industry specific professions. Up until today, the consensus was that in

Ask Canadians if you want to understand Mr. Berlusconi

Non-Italian friends often ask why Italians have voted for Mr. Berlusconi for 20 years, and still do. I try hard, but it is next to impossible to explain; Italians, they say, are sometimes totally irrational. Well, it seems like Italians are not alone, thanks to Canadians! This is a pretty

That Altavista moment

Remember when the best search engine was Altavista? Remember how frustrating it was to look for something on the Net? Search results would be mostly unrelated to what you where looking for, sometime adding a search term helped, but, even if Altavista had found what you were looking for, it

The meta-organism: the Internet and us, is it real?

The Internet has become part of the fabric of our lives; if we want to create the next big thing we must understand the relationship between the Internet and us and take it to a whole new level. I have been pondering about this relationship since I sold my latest

Self and Cognitive Systems

I'll be in Wimbledon for the next three weeks. Fortunately it is much cooler here than in Italy, so I can work more efficiently! I was expecting to sleep without mosquitoes, but unfortunately I found two of them in the room last night; they have probably come all

The art of free society

Lately I cannot travel too far for personal reasons, though I expect this to change sooner rather than later; so when I found online about the Unconventional Computation Conference to be held at Bicocca University in Milan, I decided to attend. Bicocca is 8 km away from my place, so

The state of Neuromorphic Engineering as seen from an outsider

Last week I was in Sardinia at the annual Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop organized by the University of Zurich. This was my third time at the workshop, so I now know many of the participants and it was good to get an update on their research and personal

The brain is not a computer

Understanding the brain means being able to replicate some of its functions. A one page description, or a hundred pages will not do. Current technologies, that allow us to emulate the brain, are all based in a way or another on Turing's work. Modern processors are different from

Change, change and change

It is finally becoming mainstream. Economists are slowly appreciating the fact that the current technological progress is so fast and runs so deep into the fabric of our world that it does not allow for a smooth adjustment, but it is actually a revolution that is affecting the economy, society

Brains and computers

In a paper by Kozma, I found an interesting citation from The Computer and the Brain, the book that John Von Neumann was writing when he died: It is only proper to realize that language is largely a historical accident. The basic human languages are traditionally transmitted to us in