Consciousness in Machines

The question of the possibility of consciousness in machines is not a new one, and has discussed thoroughly throughout the ages. During the development of my idea, the problem of consciousness has come up numerous times, and since my objective was to create a thinking entity from scratch I wanted to deduce my conclusion on my own, here are my opinions.
The first questions that came to mind were,
What is consciousness?
How does it manifest itself?
Consciousness, as Dictionary.com describes it, is “the state of being conscious; awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings etc”. So essentially, consciousness is our ability to store and retrieve information at the correct time.
This vital ability of human existence to comprehend and utilize information is based on our ability to create and store experiences.
In order for me to delve deeper into the subject and make sure I cover it thoroughly I will look into ideas of naysayers. I believe Jaron Lanier is creditable enough to put my arguments to the test.
In his article he writes “I argue that computers are not conscious because they cannot recognize each other.”
Well now the question of how do I get to know what I know comes up or epistemology. Essentially what Jaron is arguing is that in order for us to be able to recognize information we must recognize our own species. But based on what are we supposed to recognize (or be able to know that you have experienced that experience before) information?
And when they will be able to recognize each other what then? Will they then be conscious?
And when we are conscious, based on what do we organize the information? How do we create the ability to provide names for objects, or mental representatives of objects which are summed not only when they represent a single idea but as well as when dependant on other information (which we call context).
The implication of my idea is that not only humans are conscious but so are animals, and in order to create conscious machines it is not only obligatory to enable them to store information , as they can today, but to retrieve it at the right time.
What is the right time and what does it mean “right time?
And maybe more importantly, how is information stored and why in such a way?