I think I followed about 27% of that. Better than my usual average. sometimes free Republic makes me feel not so bright lol. would it just be more memory and faster processing that would give a computer consciousness? Or would something else be needed.
It may be that we will never be able to create machines that have consciousness like ours. I believe that we will be able to create machines that mimic human behavior to a large degree, but it may be technically impossible to go that last mile from mimicking human behavior to true consciousness.
That being said, this and other technologies will allow us to put more computing power in smaller spaces with less weight and less power. Think of what this could do for drones. You could create really small fly-like drones with ridiculous amounts of sensing and computing powers. Cell phones could disappear into our heads, or maybe just implanted somewhere near or inside our ears. We could all have heads-up displays in our eyes so that when we looked out on a city block we would see Yelp reviews superimposed over each of the restaurants and shops.
Things might get a bit creepy and maybe a bit too Orwellian, but there will be all those cool new gadgets to play with.
Something else. Memory, speed, and even complexity don’t create the “I think therefor I am” reality. We humans don’t know (scientifically) what does. Only God does.