"Because the telegraph analogy is actually a pretty decent analogy."
No it isn't. Constructing analogies is for poets and fiction writers. Science does not construct analogies. The force on an accelerating mass isn't analogous to F=ma, it IS F=ma. If what you said is true, that neurons are like telegraph stations and their dendrites the wires then it could not be true that neurons can communicate without a direct connection or "wire" between them. Neurons can communicate without any synaptic connection between them (See: "Neurons Talk Without Synapses"). Therefore the analogy is false.
"What makes you think a sufficiently large number of organized telegraph lines won't act like a brain?"
Because that is an example of magical thinking. It is not based on a functional understanding of the phenomenon. "If I just pour more of chemical A into solution B I will get a bigger and better reaction." We are strongly attracted to thinking like that. It's probably why it took us thousands of years to really get how to do science properly.
No it isn't. Constructing analogies is for poets and fiction writers. Science does not construct analogies. The force on an accelerating mass isn't analogous to F=ma, it IS F=ma. If what you said is true, that neurons are like telegraph stations and their dendrites the wires then it could not be true that neurons can communicate without a direct connection or "wire" between them. Neurons can communicate without any synaptic connection between them (See: "Neurons Talk Without Synapses"). Therefore the analogy is false.
Science uses ana...
Recent article in The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/ibm-brain-simulation-compass.html
Here is the research report from IBM, with the simple title "10^14":
http://www.modha.org/blog/SC12/RJ10502.pdf
It's nothing like a real brain simulation, of course, but illustrates that hardware to do this is getting very close.
There is likely to be quite a long overhang between the hardware and the software...