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Comment by knolax | Hacker News Reader

> Modern transistors, which function as a computer’s brain cells

Who's the target audience for this analogy? If you understand what a brain cell is then you probably know what a transistor is too. I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is.

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You don't need to know the details of a brain cell to get the analogy. If I say "transistor" to my mom, she wouldn't be able to tell me what it is. If I say "It's like the brain cells for the computer", she would probably understand that "Ah, so a computer has many transistors that helps it think", which seems good enough for an article with a broad audience.

> I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is

I'm happy to take you up on that bet, but it depends on what bubble you ask. In San Francisco/Silicon Valley, that's probably true, but outside any high-tech bubbles, more people know that we have brain cells in our heads, than we have transistors in our computers, I'm fairly sure.

I would take that bet, too. If you say “transistor” to non-technical people over 50 or so, they more likely would think of small portable radios (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio). To them, and many others, computers don’t have transistors, they have chips.

They _might_ know the transistor replaced vacuum tubes, but I doubt many would be able to tell what function either had, or be able to point out the transistors inside such a radio.

Is that a USA/North America thing, based on calling radio sets "transistor radios"?

Here in the UK we had "the wireless", and I'm confident that my parents - late 70s - who were the generation of first domestic computer ownership in the UK would associate "transistor" primarily with computers.

Definitely not just a USA thing, "transistor" also meant "transistor radio" in Russian back in the day.

(E.g. this song from 1982: https://learnsongs.ru/song/dinamik-na-plyazhe-pleshchet-voln...)

Same in India!

But does your mother read Wired?

For sure not, being from not-the-US, she has most likely never heard of "Wired"

A CPU do not think. It follows precise instructions.

And what about a human brain?

The source paper[1], "Single-chip microprocessor that communicates directly using light" may be closer to your preferred level.

[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16454.epdf

It seems to be paywalled, though.

There is a DOI at the top/right of the paywalled version - just plug that into SciHub (I just verified it's there)

Today I learned:

DOI = 'Digital Object Identifier'

Sorry, I do get to remember to expand acronyms, but this one slipped through ;)

Same here, thanks to you both.

I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is.

No chance. Everyone knows what a brain cell is, to some extent. Even people who have too few to rub together don't really feel like they know what a transistor is after reading the Wikipedia page for them, twice...

I used to know what a transistor was. And then we shrunk them to the point where they are no longer the same thing and yet they are still a thing, so I don't know what they are anymore.

Transistor is the powerhouse of the computer.

I've been told I have two of them

So n=2 of Moore’s law for you. Keep going.

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