Alan Turing Documentary

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/04/03/alan-turing-documentary/

by shawndumas • 15 years ago

128 26 15 years ago

retlehs• 15 years ago

kwellman• 15 years ago

That page has the most elaborate and geeky captcha I've ever seen. It's also not very practical considering that something like 7 percent of men have some degree of color blindness. I can barely tell the difference between 3 and 5 on that scale.

bravura• 15 years ago

Is there any video or audio footage of Alan Turing? I am not aware of any.

It would be really amazing to see video of him, or at least hear his voice.

dill_day2• 15 years ago

Yeah, I agree. I think I remember reading maybe in the Hodges biography that there unfortunately isn't any; I think there was some sort of recorded radio interview that got lost somehow...

rauljara2• 15 years ago

"...he faced prosecution by the British government because he was gay. In 1954, Turing committed suicide at age 41 after being forced to undergo hormone therapy to “fix” his sexual orientation."

I don't know how I never heard of that before. It's certainly not from lack of hearing about Alan Turing in comp sci lectures. I feel kind of cheated that I didn't find out about it until now. Did the professors just not know? Were they too squeamish to talk about it? Did they think his biography was irrelevant in discussing his contributions to the field? It's just kind of unsettling to have heard him talked about as a genius so many times yet to have never heard it acknowledged that he was so profoundly mistreated.

dill_day2• 15 years ago

Definitely! I felt the same way. I'm just finishing my undergrad CS degree and I think there was maybe one AI lecture that mentioned Alan Turing-the-human-being out of all the classes I took... I would sometimes wonder.. are there other students who just hear things like "Turing complete", "Turing machine", etc., but don't have any idea who this "Turing" actually was?

I wish it was more common as part of these classes to actually talk about the great CS people.. who they are.. in our short history, because this is interesting stuff! Oh well.

rdouble• 15 years ago

There are many interesting characters in the mathematical sciences but most courses don't go into their personal backgrounds.

bootload2• 15 years ago

"I wanted Alan Turing to be raised into the pantheon of great Britons, but I felt it would be hypocritical to do so without recognising that Britain treated him so badly" JGC.

It's Turing year next year and it was John Graham-Cumming ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc who organised for Turing to receive an apology from the British Government for his mistreatment. You can read more about it here ~ http://seldomlogical.com/2009/09/12/a-benevolent-social-hack

vixen99• 15 years ago

I wonder if our descendants will be apologizing for some of our actions once we're all dead? However I suppose that by then the re-definition of what I used to understand by the word 'apology' will be complete.

jgrahamc• 15 years ago

I'd never read your write up before. Thanks for that.

Anon84• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing#Death

(Unconfirmed) Rumor has it that's the reason behind apple's "half eaten" logo and original rainbow colors.

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

(Unconfirmed) Rumor has it that's the reason behind apple's "half eaten" logo and original rainbow colors.

That should read "(Pretty thoroughly debunked) Rumor has it...."

For example, http://www.greggore.com/dln021203.htm, or the Wikipedia page you quoted yourself.

danssig3• 15 years ago

>It's just kind of unsettling to have heard him talked about as a genius so many times yet to have never heard it acknowledged that he was so profoundly mistreated.

At the time, being homosexual was considered a mental disorder. This is how we used to treat people with mental disorders. Now, go to your nearest insane asylum and see if we're any less barbaric today. Be prepared for disappointment.

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

>Now, go to your nearest insane asylum and see if we're any less barbaric today. Be prepared for disappointment.

Erm, care to back that one up there my friend?

rauljara2• 15 years ago

I happen to have a friend who was forcibly admitted to a mental hospital as a result of delusions and suicide attempts. I visited him a lot, and while there were many things that were disappointing about his treatment there, I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. Compared to the 60's (and earlier) it is very difficult to forcibly admit someone, and even if you do have a judge saying someone can legally be confined in an institution, it is in the institution's financial interest to get that person out of there as quickly as possible. The biggest problem with modern psychological treatment isn't shit like what happened to Turing; it's that for really serious disorders - asylums (instead of being improved) were replaced with the street.

Incidentally, my friend, while he didn't enjoy his time at the hospital at all, will tell you he's glad the judge forced him in. He probably wouldn't be alive otherwise.

draegtun• 15 years ago

The BBC did a really good TV drama on Turing called "Breaking the code" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115749/).

I suspect its available on DVD now. Here is a small snippet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV67Sj2jkVg

adambyrtek• 15 years ago

Don't blame the professors, blame yourself. Of course I don't mean this literally, I'm just trying to say that it's good to get used to doing your own research. Professors won't teach you everything that's important. It's primarily your job to broaden your horizons.

j2bryson• 15 years ago

I was told by a friend, not a prof. But now that I'm a prof I can tell you that most students look at you weird if you go anywhere near politics in a CS lecture. Or even into biology / evolution.

anonymous• 15 years ago

Let me guess: you happen to be living in the US?

api• 15 years ago

In terms of actual real-world tangible importance, I consider Alan Turing more important than Einstein. He and von Neumann are possibly the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

BTW, another thing people often don't know about Turing and von Neumann was that their interests went beyond computers and mathematics. Both were very interested in biology and physics as well, and did important work on those fields. von Neumann in particular did important work in regard to the theory of self-replication, early proto-evolutionary-information-theory, etc.

Alan Turing Documentary

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