[mechanical_fish]

Yes, isn't our conception of data structures bound up fairly tightly with the available storage media and data buses? We have thought a lot about how to organize and retrieve data on tapes, and spinning disks, and random-access memories composed of discrete little bins, each storing a bit and addressed in rows and columns.

But we don't make extensive use of (say) analog computers, or computers with data buses having several million sub-channels. Hand us a machine employing such principles and it's back to square one. (Except for the lucky pure mathematician or two who got there first but whose work remains obscure right now, the way George Boole's work used to be obscure.)

And my stupid examples are just examples - I have no idea if the brain, or any bit of it, is best conceived of as an analog computer. Nobody knows what kind of computer the brain is like, except that it is almost entirely unlike the silicon-based digital computers that we build in the von Neumann tradition. And, presumably, when it comes time to discuss brain-based data structures they will turn out almost entirely unlike the structures in our digital-computer-data-structures textbooks.

[jonnytran]

Agreed. Another example is quantum computing.

I'm actually really surprised that no one has even mentioned the idea that the brain may be a quantum computer. Check out this Google Tech Talk entitled "Does an Explanation of Higher Brain Function require references to Quantum Mechanics" by Hartmut Neven. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qAIPC7vG3Y