Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

By Gary Marcus

(Houghton Mifflin, 2008) 

The human mind, far from being a highly efficient computer, is in fact the product of a bumpy evolutionary path, serving as a marvelous storage facility but operating as a shaky retrieval system, concludes NYU’s Gary Marcus in his new book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. “Kluge,” a term popularized by computer pioneer Jackson Granholm, is “an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.”

            The fundamental difference between computers and the human mind is in the basic organization of memory, Marcus observes. While computers organize everything according to physical locations, the human brain stores millions of memories, but has no idea where they are located—information is retrieved not by knowing where it is but by using cues or clues that hint at what we are looking for. Marcus, director of NYU’s Center for Child Language, contends that evolution has produced a complex but overloaded neurological system that utilizes “contextual memory.”