It is somewhat common for the human body and mind to be described in terms of computer hardware and the software it brings into being. Of course, this is most likely to specifically happen in contexts of scientific inquiry instead of contexts where consciousness is recognized as being inherently more foundational in an epistemological sense than sensory experiences. This does not mean that the comparison has no usefulness in conveying ideas or that it has no veracity. When understood correctly, it has much to offer, especially since computer technology is so prominent in modern life! It is just that there are flawed or incomplete ways of assessing the analogy.
The comparison(s) could be emphasized in different ways, so the following statement is not true of every use of the analogies. However, there are those who treat the brain and computer hardware (or consciousness and computer software) as if it is electronics that the brain resembles. This could be communicated in a default way by only calling humans machines instead of reversing this emphasis. If anything, in a clearer sense, it is not the human nervous system and mind that resemble electronic hardware and the software the physical materials stand behind, but the other way around: it is the electronic hardware-software combination that humans have created that resemble the human nervous system and mind respectively.
Unless it is computer software or sentient machines that made humans, rather than the other way around, the idea that humans designed computers and the human body and mind turned out to resemble hardware and software is actually backwards. The truth would otherwise be that computers just happened to share key similarities with brains and software just happened to share similarities with immaterial minds by extension. Indeed, this is the more precise way to approach the comparisons if one wishes to actually make them sound on a deeper level than that of a casual analogy.
The comparison of brains to electronic hardware and consciousness to computer software has its limited validity and uses, but the analogies can be misperceived or presented in an inverted manner that actually elevates machines and their software over their similar human components. In truth, it is the biological and phenomenological parts of humans that take primacy, for electronic devices that run software (even if the software is not truly conscious or in actual control of the hardware's behaviors) are what happens to so closely parallel human existence in certain ways. The human mind and body are inherently more central in such comparisons than anything humans can create.
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