[ozy]

Well, metaphors are like perspectives. The steam engine perspective has many useful aspects to it, even today. But it has more limits than the computer metaphor.

But if you want to use the metaphors to capture the core of what the brain does, then no, I don't think either are much good.

I would put much more emphasis on learning and surprise. Not the big kind of learning, like a new language. But learning what to expect in situational patterns. Making predictions of what might happen, and surprise when what really happened did not fit anything.

But that does not have a good metaphor from ordinary life.