Alan Turing

[Beef Oven!]

for the sentiment

for the logic

[eighthobstruction]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6NnCOs20GQ

[Tevot]

I agree with Mary's analysis but I guess it's the best ending to a very sad and salutary tale.

The question that no-one seems to raise is: having done so much in his relatively short life, what else might Akan Turing have achieved had he klived a further twenty-five years, possibly in a stable nurturing relationship?

'Victimless crime' cries Peter Tatchell of Turing's punishment, and quite rightly. But what if the true victim were humankind?

In full agreement here Ams. The pardon imho is a selfie. The State tries to take credit by dispensing "mercy" - and ducks the issue of its own guilt and the incalculable and irreversible damage it did in its treatment of Alan Turing.

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well let us hope that the pardon effectively removes all legitimacy from any future such discrimination by the security, and any other, services

his crime in any case was not just being homosexual, but a known homosexual .... unlike the mandarins from Eton and Harrow who kept it mum eh

[Stillhomewardbound]

In full agreement here Ams. The pardon imho is a selfie. The State tries to take credit by dispensing "mercy" - and ducks the issue of its own guilt and the incalculable and irreversible damage it did in its treatment of Alan Turing.

Best Wishes,

Tevot

Very true and well put.

[Quarky]

an interesting take on his genius .... far more symppathetic than might be taken at first look ...

... and an odd resonance with the Ego Tunnel ideas of Mertzinger

Turing was born in 1912


he was martyred by the myopic and malign hypocrisy of our establishment; since many of them were actively gay it must be that it was that Alan was seen to be so that led to his terrorising ...

Prompted by the news about Alan Turing, I brushed up my knowledge about computing in WWII. I have a book published in 1980, but even at that date, some of the major players at Bletchley Park were still under secrecy constraints and weren't able to give more than historical anecdotes about their time there - such as Turing had a bike where the chain fell off after a certain number of rotations. Instead of reparing the bike, he just counted up the appropriate number of revs, then hopped off and reset the chain.

Anyhow, the secrecy conditions which existed after the war may have been a factor in the prosecution. At that time the general public would not have been aware of the central importance of Turing to the War Effort - they had never heard of him, else I assume there would have been a public outcry.

More than that, the Authorities did terrible damage to the technical development of computing in the UK after the war, effectively handing over the commercial development of computing to the USA. An enlightened government might have given UK the lead. (Intellectual) lions led by donkeys comes to mind. All versions of the COLOSSUS computer were destroyed, together with design documentation - see Wiki:

"Colossus documentation and hardware were classified from the moment of their creation and remained so after the War, when Winston Churchill specifically ordered the destruction of most of the Colossus machines into "pieces no bigger than a man's hand"; Tommy Flowers was ordered to destroy all documentation and burnt them in a furnace at Dollis Hill. He later said of that order:

That was a terrible mistake. I was instructed to destroy all the records, which I did. I took all the drawings and the plans and all the information about Colossus on paper and put it in the boiler fire. And saw it burn"

"After the war Flowers was granted £1,000 by the government, payment which did not cover Flowers' personal investment in the equipment and most of which he shared amongst the staff who helped him build and test Colossus. Ironically, Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus but was denied the loan because the bank did not believe that such a machine could work. He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his work on Colossus was covered by the Official Secrets Act."

Colosssus has now been rebuilt by enthusiasts from Design Engineers notes. And as for Turing, see Turingery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turingery

Do we now live in more enlightened times?

[Pikaia]

Great news about Turing, but I suppose it is too much to expect all the other victims of that law to get the same pardon!

I recently read a biography of Turing (by Andrew Hodges). Apparently, despite his mathematical ability, when he was at Bletchley Park his chess-playing ability was a bit of a joke. The UK chess champion of the time, Harry Golombek also worked there, and was able to give Turing Queen odds and still win. Once when Alan resigned, Golombek was able to turn the board around and win from a position that Turing had given up as hopeless!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Do we now live in more enlightened times?

er not in my view Oddball no .... we still suffer from a patronising and structural ignorance in government of matters scientific, technological and industrial [mere footnotes in PPE Syllabi at Exbridge eh?] and as soon as some mandarin gets a grasp on a domain he will be whisked off to another post and a complete novice will follow him into his/her old job ... the finely tuned device for avoiding all accountability has as a consequence the prevention of any destabilising and argumentative competence...

alas not in MI5 et al where the same old goons seem to stay and succeed one another mouthing the same numbskull mantras ... i have no doubt that the present MI5 leadership would have Mr Turing strung up in an Egyptian/Other torture cell for an eternity on a similarly idiotic mental leap [gay=red spy] that the old ones made ... apologies, mental leap may be overstating the nature of the event ...

[Vile Consort]

I would point out that no university with "bridge" in its name offers PPE :)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

tab huh