wetware

English

Etymology

From wet +‎ -ware.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

Noun

wetware (uncountable)

1. (slang) The human brain or mind, often specifically as a computing element. Adapted as a biological parallel to hardware and software. It also used less commonly to refer to other organic or biological matter in the same context. In frequent use in the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction.
   • 1963, Walter Millis, James Real, The Abolition of War‎^[1], Macmillan, page xv:

     What is not understood is the power hunger that resides in what the psychiatrist Kenneth Colby calls the "wetware"— the human brain about which we know very little except that it is composed of about 75 percent water.

   • 2001, Dr. Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to 'The X-Files‎^[2], Routledge, →ISBN, page 183:

     … cyberpunk dream to leave behind the fallible "meat" or "wetware" of the body by entering the datasphere ...

   • 2012 March 18, Steve Lohr, “In Crosswords, It’s Man Over Machine, for Now”, in NYT‎^[3], retrieved 2012-09-17:

     Over the weekend, an impressive crossword-solving computer program, called Dr. Fill, which I wrote about earlier, matched its digital wits against the wetware of 600 of the nation’s best human solvers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn.

2. The underlying generative code for an organism, as found in the genetic material, in the biochemistry of the cells, or in the architecture of the body’s tissues.

Further reading

• “wetware”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.