Who is Bruce?
I'm Bruce McKenzie and bioneural.net is my home in cyberspace, where I've been a frequent visitor since 1992. I've had a website up continuouly since 1994 (see History) and have published a blog since 2003. I hail from Godzone and worked for 10 years as a general medical practitioner with an interest in informatics (writing 3 books). After many years in the UK I returned home in 2006 to live in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and Heart of the Edge of the World. Back in the UK in 2008 I began offering my services freelance as a clinical knowledge architect. I enjoy photography, travelling the world, using Macs, and tinkering with various gadgets. My site is partly hobby, partly memory aid, and partly because some stuff is worth sharing (the tagline of my blog).
Subscribe to a feed for Bruce's posts.
Who is Simone?
Simone is Bruce's wife.
Subscribe to a feed for Simone's posts.
Who are Bruce & Simone?
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Subscribe to a feed for Bruce & Simone's joint posts.
Why bioneural.net?
Short answer: It sounded cool and the domain wasn't taken.
Long answer: Neural networks owe their origins as a topic of study to work at Stanford University in the 1950s. A neural network is a crude type of artificial intelligence in which multiple connections link to the processing units (nodes or artificial neurons) in parallel. The number and arrangement of these inter-neural connections weights the output of a decision made at a unit/ neurone so that it can vary from being simply true or false (0 or 1). The biological inspiration for neural networks is readily apparent. Neural networks are strictly-speaking non-digital because they are not limited to manipulating zeros and ones. They can, however, be simulated on computers—which are of course digital. These digital simulations are properly referred to as artificial neural networks or ANNs. Non-digital, biological neural networks (bioneural nets) are considerably more complicated than ANNs. Existing examples (e.g. the neurons and dendritic connections of the brain) can be studied to supply inspiration, but thus far cannot be duplicated (Star Trek aside!).
