Printing press or computer?

How humans communicate how the brain works is detrimental to how we understand the ways in which we speak. If we talked about the mind as a loose metaphor for a printing press insight is hidden and other insights are highlighted. The brain is a printing press metaphor highlights the fixed memory humans seem to have. Just like a printing press it was once thought that memories and their emotional ties to the state of mind humans are in when they remember this memory is permanent. Once the letters are pressed onto the paper there is little that can be done to ‘erase’ the letters. This loosely holds true for the memories and the brains functioning. Fluidity of thought is lost in this metaphor. The brain has an amazing capacity for memory but what was once compared to a printing press has now, with a little more understanding, been compared to a computer. The printing press leaves no room for change in the data that streams to the brain. With a computer one could erase and change data. But this computer metaphor has its drawbacks as well. The model needs to read like this: A massive amount of computers networked together on multiple levels allowing for multiple access points is the brain. What Taylor and many other scientists use to explain the complexity of human thought is a network metaphor. The brain, like the world in which it is enmeshed, then, operates according to network logic. “Changes in the structure and function of the brain result both from the coadaptation of neural networks within the brain and from the coadaptation between the brain and its environment. As a result of its coadaptive capacity, the brain is not hardwired but, like all complex networks, functions between fixity and flux. The constraints facilitating brain functions and mental activity are not completely predetermined but change in relation to other physical, chemical, and biological processes” (Taylor).
An example of the fluid networking nature is the reconstruction of memories. Memories are not hardwired into the brain ready to be recalled in the exact form in which the person perceived the memory. Rather, memories are reconstructed calling on the activation of many neurons across multiple networks to build the memory to process into conscious thought. Here is where the printing press metaphor fails to explain. A reason why, though, that people of that era until recently have used the printing press as a viable explanation to the way humans think is because not enough was known about the brain’s interworkings. A lot was assumed like since we seem to be able to instantly recall events that happened to us years ago must mean that memories are kept in a location ready to be perfectly intact and drawn up like a document fresh off the press.
These metaphors help explain to a layperson how human thought is constructed but only through more probing of the mind can any real information about thought come from. Yes, the printing press does help to explain the vast storage capacity of the brain and the ability to recall intact memories instantly. Yes, the computer model helps to give further details about the brains fluid changing nature. But these models change with both the advent of new technology but more importantly more data on the brain. The memory example is a good explanation as to why these metaphors may break down once more info about the brain surfaces. This explains the change in metaphor usage. Maybe twenty years from now we will be comparing human thought to some new technology because more is discovered about the brain. What is interesting is that our daily language still retains these old metaphors even after they are considered obsolete. Why is the word impression still being used when we have theoretically moved on from this metaphor in explaining human thought?