You might also enjoy: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf, especially sections 5 and 6.
And yesterday is a story you tell yourself to explain today ;-)
Sounds like a line from a movie by the Wachowski brothers.
I don't know why people need a clear, binary difference of what makes one "human" to appreciate how beautiful life and the mind is.
Am I in the minority that has no problems with being categorizes as a mammal, just more progressed, not different altogether?
The problem is a lack of tools to explore this further. Where are the testable predictions?
The question also makes one mistake: the first neuron fires long before birth. Develop meant is a gradual process, so the emergence of consciousness probably is too.
We have language. So do the dolphins, albeit less complex. We are self-aware. So are chimps, dolphins, etc. Perhaps their self-awareness is not as sharply defined and perceived like ours, but it's there.
etc. etc.
This leads into my biggest question regarding consciousness: how does one think without language? We all have an inner self speaking in one language or another, but what if we had no knowledge of any language?
Does language define consciousness?
When you cross the street, do you narrate the situation to yourself ("One car approaching at about 25 miles per hour, currently two hundred feet away, decelerating at...") or do you model them visually?
Now if you were sitting on your couch in dead silence in a pitch black room, what would be going on in your head with no language?
But there are plenty of neuroscientists who think lisp is some sort of speech impediment. I've heard lots of theories, but smart people were probably right a long time ago and we just haven't caught up.
That said, even if the lispy sort of theory works out in the end, who cares? I mean, it's like arguing about Godel's incompleteness. No matter how profound the answer, the answer just isn't going to influence your day-to-day life that much. "nothing more than electrical signals" is about all that the vast majority of people really need to understand in order to solve their particular problems.
I'm not sure whether to recommend Dennett's Consciousness Explained or to compel the questioner to work through The Molecular Biology of the Cell, followed by (e.g.) Hölldobler and Wilson's Journey to the Ants -- and then keep going -- before trying to dismiss the complexity of a network of neurons with the wave of one hand.