Starting program has goals.
Goals spin off sub goals by calling for any parallel processes who can give answers.
Parallel processors are set in restrictive domains with certain pre-programmed 'knowledge' and 'capabilities', and a set of external algorithms and programs that can be run on them to be loaded if needed, or self programmed if no existing program is available.
Empty parallel processors cooperate in accepting a needed process by communicating between each other and if they are inside the correct "domain" they may program themselves, using available knowledge from the community or even the web, so that they can answer the problem as best and fastest possible.
The system evolves and works in parallel. Different versions of the system (at different evolutionary times, or evolved again at a different time or with different conditions) could be compared to each other, choosing hybrids of the system that best fit the problem and desired results.
The classical OCR paradigm would not be altogether "neural network" algorithemless, but on the other hand will not be run by a central algorithm controlled program which sets up the whole thing and them accumulates results.
Rather, there will be competing but cooperating input sources and competing but cooperating processing units, and perhaps a few competing but cooperating output venues, similar to our sentences which can be sometimes constructed partially in advance and partially "on the run"
There will also be processes closing if things aren't working correctly.-- pashute, Jun 17 2015 Siri is just a self programming program. Mine is a distributed system constantly evolving and synchronizing http://gizmodo.com/...-program-1620083579 [pashute, Jun 17 2015] I just saw someone beat me to it Competing Multiversion Tasks Computationearly senility [pashute, Jun 17 2015] random, halfbakery