Thousands Calling For Apology To Founder Of Computer Science

Gizmodo Australia / BBC ^ | 1 Sept., 2009 | By Joanna Stern

[OldSpice]

 

 

Alan Turing, who is said to be the father of modern computer science, was a WWII code-breaker until he was prosecuted by the British government for having homosexual relations. Thousands have now signed a petition calling for a government apology.

Turing committed suicide two years after his prosecution in 1954, but was before given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment”. He is most well known for his NAZI enigma code breaking work for the British during the second World War and his helping establish a test to measure the intelligence of a machine which is now known as a Turing Test.

So far more than 5500 signatures have been collected on the Downing Street petition started by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. Author Ian McEwan put his John Hancock on the petition.  [BBC]

[TomOnTheRun]

No names or source, naturally. Rhiner, Zener, Jung, Bormanis, Metzger. Are those enough names or do you want more? Sources - each wrote a book about it. Except Carl Jung who had a series of lectures collected into a book after his death. I suppose you could also count the mentions of his youthful interest in it from Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Also - the fact that national governments for every major world power of the time funded experiments and testing demonstrates that people didn't believe it to be unreasonable to at least test it and find out.

[BobL]

Talk about watching a culture go down the tubes...and only 60 years out.

Sad.

[TChris]

It wasn’t a mistake 50 years ago. It was based on sound law and sound psychiatric beliefs that existed at the time.

Precisely.

Now we know that it's all normal and good! Heck, we should all do it!

[Nathan Zachary]

I never said it did. It uses a form of computer LANGUAGE however.

[TomOnTheRun]

You never actually read Turing, did you?

Oh yes. I read him in response to Godel and Wittgenstein actually.

[freedomlover]

Charles Babbage was also difficult to work with and alienated the supporters of his work.

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Sounds like this guy was the Father of IT Support.

(ducking) ;)

[Nathan Zachary]

I think Tom and steve want to do it...

[TomOnTheRun]

Without such algorithmic logic modern computers would not work. I do consider him the founder of modern digital computing. He changed the game. If people want to expand beyond that it’s their call.

[TomOnTheRun]

It uses a form of computer LANGUAGE however.

No it doesn't. There is no processing, communication, or decision tree. It physically blocks the passage of a needle - that is all.

[Nathan Zachary]

LOL

[theDentist]

No for 2 reasons: 1) He’s dead. Sorry, but an apology is litterally falling on deaf ears.... and 2) An apology therefore opens up the Government to legal action (being sued) for millions.

[Nathan Zachary]

Again, look up the definition of computer.

It processes the information on the card. It doesn’t matter HOW it does it, mechanically or otherwise.

[Nathan Zachary]

Electronics can be seen as mechanical devices as well. They open and close “valves” that stop electron flow.

[TomOnTheRun]

No. There is no computation. If there is no computation it is not a computer. If it’s not a computer it’s not using a computer language. It also cannot be said to be “processing” in the same way your computer processes. Unless you think your food processor is computing the vegetable dip you put in it.

[TomOnTheRun]

I have no problem thinking of mechanical computers as computers. But they aren’t modern computers. They aren’t digital. They have no memory as such. There are all sorts of computations they are unable to process.

[Nathan Zachary]

A computer is a platform for information processing.
Sorry, you can’t get around that definition.

It doesn’t matter if the information is a series of holes on a card, or modern computer programing language.

A computer is simply a device that processes information

[TomOnTheRun]

2) An apology therefore opens up the Government to legal action (being sued) for millions.

Whoah. They didn't murder him. Surely there is some sort of statute of limitations on this sort of thing isn't there? It's been amore than 50 years. Besides - who would have standing to sue? He's dead and as a gay man he had no children.

[antiRepublicrat]

I thought they captured an Enigma machine from a submarine and reverse engineered it.

Even if you do get an Enigma you can't decipher any message. You need the right wheels with the right positions and settings, and the right ring and plugboard settings, for that message or it's still gibberish. These settings were distributed in codebooks, and getting a codebook would of course only get you the messages for the timeframe covered by the codebook.

Getting the German military Enigma from the Poles gave them a starting point for actually being able to break codes by exploiting weaknesses in the encryption. Turing's contribution wasn't just in the code breaking itself, but in designing computers that could break the codes. His machine with his algorithm could eliminate most of the trillion-trillion possible keys for a message very quickly.

Both the Nazis and the Soviets were notorious for their mistake of persecuting brilliant undesirables, and look where it got them. Luckily for us Britain didn't go after Turing until after the war.

[TomOnTheRun]

That’s not a modern computer. I’m sorry - I’m not giving credit for modern computers to whatever egyptian poppy addict invented the first astrolabe It meets the same definition you provide but it’s just not a modern computer.

[Nathan Zachary]

And since what you are insisting can only be called a computer didn’t exist at the time this guy lived, he couldn’t have been the founder of the science that eventually created it, could he.

Not an inventor of resistors, transistors, silicon micro chips, hard drives, or even mechanical memory storage devices, none of it.