The parallels between sensory input to the brain and input channels to computers offer some insight into the means that each processing system has for establishing its physical and logical position within the world around it; its context if you will. In general, each system must make use of this input as foundation information that it can use for the subsequent formulation and application of relevant policy in various situations. Ostensibly, it is through this information that each system can perceive the evidence of information applicable to its respective hierarchy of needs.

Over the period of the evolutionary development of life on the earth, the principle sources of light have been direct sunlight, reflected sunlight (moonlight) and fire. In certain instances, photoluminescent sources might have provided small amounts of light, but probably not sufficient to impact the development of sight in the form of light sensory organs in land based, surface organisms. That portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that comprises visible light is a small frequency band for which sensors have evolved in a number of species. These light sensors vary in the intensity levels that they can detect and in the specific frequencies that they can resolve. Bordering the band of visible light frequencies are infrared (lower frequencies than visible light) and ultraviolet (higher frequencies than visible light). In fact, certain species can see better at the lower frequencies; essentially they are able to discern the heat radiated by other living creatures. This is a particularly useful trait for creatures that interact with their world nocturnally.

The first prototypical eyes in the vertebrate lineage may have emerged over 500 millions years ago. This form of eye was the first capable of rendering an actual image of the field of vision. This capability, at virtually any level of acuity, would have presented a serious mutational event in the balance between predators and prey. The survival of members of a species in the respective food chains likely depended on their developing comparable or superior visual function, unless the entire area of such detection was rendered far less important by other characteristics such as natural camouflage, perhaps through color variations.

The eyes comprise an optical sensor that is able to take light within the wavelength range of 4,000 to 8,000 angstrom units and convert it into a continuous signal stream through the optic nerve directly into the brain. This is an extremely high bandwidth channel and the brain has highly developed sections that can receive and interpret the information from this channel, and subsequently make use of it in the form of image perceptions within the brain. Each eye has a series of mechanical elements used for collection of light and focusing it on a plane of receptor sensors within the retina. These sensors, a collection of differentiated cells termed rods and cones, translate light into stimuli applied directly to the optic nerve. A single rod can detect a single photon, and fire an impulse upon reception that is conveyed to the brain.

Eyes to the front of the head improve depth and motion perception over a limited field of view, oriented toward the front of the individual. This is superior eye placement for animal predators. On the other hand, eye placement for species that rather naturally form the prey for such predators is usually to the side of the head, offering the widest area of vision to both the front and back of the animal.

The physical ecosystem in which the human species finds itself includes a mechanism for interaction at a distance through a process of induced pressure waves in our surrounding medium; a mechanism that we call sound. Sound is a mechanical process. It is generated by a mechanism capable of creating a sharp gradient in the density of a material. A membrane vibrating in air can render a sinusoidally repeating pattern of pressure waves, a constant frequency wave train: a middle C on an oboe for instance. Instantaneously raising the temperature of some medium by a

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