Neural nets are a popular technique in Artificial Intelligence based on simplified models of neurons and interneuronal connections gathered from brain research. Ray Kurzweil describes them pretty well here:

What hit me as I was reading this was how eerily close is society (as in human society) to a neural net. Think about it. Have you ever wondered how there are so many great and worthy causes being fought out there that you are not taking part of? You read, listen, think, and sometimes chat about them (you’re adding up the signals coming into you), but the signals simply do not exceed your (mostly random) threshold, and you don’t “fire”, you don’t act, your output is zero. (Street children and the EFF are the first examples that come to my mind, what are yours?)

Take me, for example: after many years of almost total political apathy, I’m close to releasing a web-app about Mexican Politics —in other words, I’ve become political (!)— because in the previous weeks several inputs conspired (somewhat randomly) to spur me into action. I’m an excited neuron in this weird, tragic brain that is Mexico and I only wish that I can get my next layer of neighboring neurons to fire.

Here’s a parting thought: media (and particularly ads) are the neurotransmitters of the hive mind.

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