Ask HN: Is theoretical computer science missing some parameters?

I took my first course on theoretical computer science this semester was left inspired and confused. I was inspired because Turing's realizations that a simple hypothetical machine can compute any and every computable function is amazing. The fact that everything, including our gigahertz processors and our brains, boils down to a very simple machine. I was confused because it seems like the entire field of theoretical computer science is missing some parameters. Sure, everything is a Turing machine, but the more interesting thing to know is how different instantiations of computation are different from each other. Perhaps if we understood the qualitative differences between Turing machines, our Intel processors, a massively parallel computer, a deep learning neural network, and our skull full of neurons, it would inform the progress of computer science and its subfields, not least of which being artificial intelligence.