> Modern computing technology has brought these goals within sight.

Haven't we been saying this since we had vacuum tubes and early chess programs?

We thought machine vision would be easy and that turned out pretty tricky.

> ICT is ready to give us a completely new understanding of the brain and its diseases; understanding the brain will lead inevitably to radical innovation in computing.

I can't help feeling this is backwards. As we learn more about the brain our simulations become better. But I'd be really interested in any computer simulations that have improved our understanding of brain stuff.