Even as the power of our modern computers grows exponentially, biological systems – like our brains – remain the ultimate learning machines. By finding materials that act in ways similar to the mechanisms that biology uses to retain and process information, scientists hope to find clues to help us build smarter computers.

Inspired by human forgetfulness – how our brains discard unnecessary data to make room for new information – scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory and three universities, conducted a recent study that combined supercomputer simulation and X-ray characterization of a material that gradually “forgets.” The material, called a quantum perovskite, offers researchers a simpler non-biological model of what “forgetfulness” might look like on an electronic level. The perovskite shows an adaptive response when protons are repeatedly inserted and removed that resembles the brain’s desensitization to a recurring stimulus.

This could one day be used for advanced bio-inspired computing. (1)

We are who we are because of what we have forgotten.

We used to know everything.

Only because we knew nothing.

Then we forgot it all.

And tried to be god in the place of God.

We believe that our great strength is our ability to think. But thinking is the only thing which makes us filter the cosmos through unwanted filters. We believe remembering is what makes us who we are. But remembering is the only thing which makes us attach to this foreign world. Even in a cosmos full of antinomies, we believe in logic. Because we remember a lot but some things we have started to forget. And forgetting leaves some room for old deeper knowledge to find its way back.

This knowledge does not look like knowledge.

This remembrance does not look like remembering.

It is like a dried-out river.

And someone just forgot to close the damn.

Water is tricking now again in the same dry paths…

And slowly, there is a hum closing in…