The "stream of consciousness" is a product of the dialog between one part of a system and another, and according to this project (see video) Neural Networks can be programmed for artificial intelligence and in a way become "conscious".
Basically the dialog the machine has is between two parts of itself: 1) the Idea-Creator and 2) the Critic-Director. The former generates new ideas, while the latter asseses them as useful or garbage, etc ...
The Creativity Machine, imagitrons, perceptrons and machine near-death-experiences ...
In Its Image
[From the Google Vid:] In the mid 70s, an aspiring theoretical physicist made what he and many others feel is the most important discovery in the world. This very significant film is about the resulting invention, one that can author all subsequent ideas, provide a totally unanticipated cosmology, and possibly deliver us from death.
[From the website:] In Its Image Incorporated is a California non-profit corporation that is literally dedicated to saving everyone's lives. Its primary mission is to achieve life extension through the melding of human consciousness with a radically new kind of machine intelligence. Its secondary mission is to demonstrate the plausibility of achieving this profound purpose, and in so doing, fund the main objective of immortality.
