Jeff Hawkins, creator of the PalmPilot and the Treo, has funded start-up Numenta, which is a technology that attempts to fuse silicon and gray matter to produce the ultimate intelligent machine. Hawkins has always had an obsession with brain function and study but could not pursue it in a formal education program. At the same time that he was perfecting new business technologies, Hawkins continued to cogitate on his overarching theory of how the brain works and he is now ready to talk about his quest. He says his search could lead to a huge technical advance with far-ranging implications. Numenta, he says is on its way to creating the first truly intelligent computera thinking machine that, in essence, learns the same way the human brain does. Numenta smart software imitates the human brain in a three-step process. In the first step, machines embedded with Numenta software learn from observation and exposure to data from the real world, including images, sounds, and physical vibrations. In step two, Numenta's algorithms take the data and organize it into patterns and sequences and follow up by predicting the probability of what will happen next. The third step involves software memory nodes that communicate with one another in a brain-like, multi-level structure that allows machines to learn from pattern sequences. Potential applications include x-ray interpretation and security surveillance, smart cars, oil and gas exploration, e-commerce recommendation engines, and very difficult and complex science problems.