I'll have to agree with Road Closed on this one. If another lifeform could view humans from an unbiased perspective, I could imagine what single adjectives would be used to describe our nature. The spectrum would range from sympathetic to pathetic, Peaceful to Vengeful, Intriguing to loathesome. The Human creation is an imperfect bio-unit. Once we reach the threshold of adult hood, we are given the oppurtunity to become a more defined machine, yet flaws will always exist in our operation, processing and descisions. Data gathered from ventures that are unsuccesful, yield higher advantage of future definition that those of success. By this fact alone, we are hardly effecient creatures.
A friend of mine once stated that "The computer is an extension of the human mind"
I would like to take that a step further in saying that the computer is "A more reliable and efficent extension of the human mind. If one knows multiplication (that is usually a required teaching by 4th grade) and can truly state from memory that 6x8=48, then why would it not be too extravagent to think the same person could tell you what the total cost of 6 units times $8 per unit and considering an 8% discount? On the contrary, I'm sure that no one would agree that the human mind could multiply 6 x 8 1billion times in one second and come up with the sum of all multiplications in an instant. However, the answer is already known. No processing is required. Would that not be 48 Billion? What I guess that I'm saying is that collectively, we already have all the answers. We had to in order to create the machines. We just ask them questions we don't have time to figure out on our own.
Build a computer that can carry out all the concious thoughts of a human being and design each of it's own components to be an individual unit that can monitor and regulate itself and send reports back to the same processor utilizing front end processing without increasing a usage threshold and allow the unit as a 'whole' to entertain itself in an idle fashion while being productive, counteractive and intuitive, allow it to depend solely on itself to carry out repair tasks and then you may then try to figure out how to enstill conciousness.
I think that in order to make the computer a more perfect machine, we would need to re-evaluate the whole digital scenario. Basics. 1/0. On/Off. There is really no room for "it depends" on the fundamental level of digital basics. Just my 2cents.

I also once heard a colleague say "it's a good thing that computers are digital machines instead of analogue machines, think of all of the heat that would be created".