Your brain is a greedy little fellow.  Although it comprises only 2% of your body weight, it consumes 20% of the oxygen supply.  Deprived of oxygen for a mere one minute, it’s cells will begin to die off and two minutes later, serious permanent damage will have occurred.  Oxygen is number one on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – love, esteem and self-actualization all build on a foundation that starts with oxygen.  It’s one of those essential things that we take for granted, until it’s at risk. 

Scientists say that the typical adult human brain uses about 12 watts of power, obtained from combining that oxygen with glucose.  This is a lot in relation to the rest of the body, but efficient compared with a 60-watt light-bulb, and mind-bogglingly miserly next to IBM’s Watson, which requires around 750,000 watts.  The brain’s energy budgeting prioritizes things we focus on and diverts its energy resources accordingly. 

The actual workload of your brain can be divided into two main tasks – the inward facing job of maintaining your bodily systems, and the outward facing one of gathering and processing information about the world around you.  We survive and flourish based on what information we gather, and what we do with that information.  Modern technologies – Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and more or less everything else – are also driven by data.  It is the starting point for countless innovations.  <continue reading>