It's on the same timescale as the European Blue Brain Project (and also Kurzweil's predictions, if you put any faith in that). If you believe that this an information technology that has an exponential growth, it's not a sufficient objection that we're far off now. The same objections were raised for the Human Genome Project, which was far from completion most of its duration, but followed an exponential growth and completed on time.

All over the net I'm reading comments from naysayers who claim this will never happen, or it won't happen this century.

Even many neuroscientists are saying it's impossible. But although they might know about neuroscience, they don't seem to have grasped the concept of exponential technology growth yet.

I'm so glad Obama is not a naysayer.

Genome is a couple megabytes. Brain is terabytes. A billion times more complex. And its not all about the chemistry, its about the physical wiring. So the same techniques won't apply.

Yes, but you only have to double a megabyte 30 times to get a terabyte. That's a better perspective to take when dealing with exponential growth. Of course, the genome and the brain are different things, but the point remains that if you believe this will have an exponential growth, being far away from solving it is exactly where you expect us to be right now. And even now, we do have quite good computational models for certain small parts of the brain.

> you only have to double a megabyte 30 times to get a terabyte.

It seems to be only 19.93 times according to Wolfram Alpha?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log%281+terabyte%2F1+me...

You're right, I assumed the billion times figure was correct, it should be a million.

National security wood be improved by a thorough mapping of the 'lizard brain' http://www.lookfordiagnosis.com/videos.php?title=What+is+the...

This research program is not about human brain modeling like the EU bluebrain. Instead, it's try to do exactly what you suggest, understanding simpler brain models and building up from that to more complex organisms.