Memory

Humans came well-equipped with memory, and if anything we seem to have lost our memories as we've 'advanced.' Computers originally came without memories, barely able to keep track of which punch-card they were reading at the moment. Von Neumann was one of the first to suggest running programs stored in memory, but it wasn't until the invention of magnetic cores that large scale storage became possible, and the limited linear access of permanent magnetic tape made creating early databases difficult. Only with improved media and RAM chips was it possible for computer memory to seem almost human.