Do you think machine consciousness is possible?
anonjon: Consciousness is orthogonal to any sort of argument about computability.Even if you were able to 'create machine consciousness' you'd have a devil of a time proving it, as the only way to prove consciousness would be to be the machine experiencing consciousness (see Turing's paper).Fact of the matter is that we /assume/ that other people are capable of consciousness because we experience our own consciousness (we believe it through analogy to ourselves).Asking if anything else is conscious is an example of an unanswerable question. (Obviously I can only examine my own consciousness!)So as to your questions:Looks like it: yes. 
Is it: Unanswerable!
Leads: quantum computers, neural networks.I don't think it is obvious, however, that Church-Turing would answer one way or another. I mean, you would have to establish that consciousness (the appearance of it, at least) is computable.This doesn't seem obvious, as what consciousness is seems ill defined, in and of itself. (See above about how we establish whether something else is conscious by analogy).