Alan Turing gets his post-mortem apology.

by UD Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:35

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8249792.stm

by Pete. Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:25

Turing does not need buildings to commemorate him.

"If you seek a monument.....look around you".

He helped to build the technological world we have around us now.

He helped to forge the mantle of REAL creativity which now belongs to the world of Science and Technology.

His last act was to bite into an apple.

That bite is symbolized in the logo of Apple Computers.
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by UD Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:40

¿ maybe the cyanide would have tasted better if its taste was cloaked in the wholesome earthy scent of an apple ?

by hmmm.., Fri Sep 11, 2009 13:19

I never knew the Apple symbol was part of the hagiography of Alan Turing. I now find myself wondering are the rainbow colours in the logo as well? It somehow seems spurious & uncited. According to wikipedia page 250 of çtmothy Ferris's book "seeing in the dark" suggests Turing's favourite fairy tale was that of "Snow White". In the traditional tale the wickedqueen tries three times to attack Snow White & though not kill her outright, cause for her to be left for dead ; with laced up clothes to suffocate her, a poisoned comb to pollute her skin and veins, and finally a laced apple leading to the glass coffin. Which is very well but the book "seeing in the dark" isn't about espionage it's about amateur backyard astronomy. It somehow seems spurious and uncited. His biographer Andrew Hodges maintains Turing staged an ambigious death to free her of any stigma associated with suicide, she remained adamant he was careless with this chemicals and wouldn't have known his apple was off.

Yet others think it could have been assassination coming at the murky embarrassing time when British Intelligence realised almost most of its old dears had gone to Cambridge, become Stalinists because it seemd the right thing to do and had all managed to get their names into the same ring books associated with a near disused toilet in South London. They chemically treated him to douse his libido. He grew breasts.

It wasn't a very good time to be homosexual, was it? It most certainly was not a very gay time to live on úber technician wages or not. But somehow it does all still seem a little spurious. Gordon Browne's pride in saying sorry, with all the facts before him.

& are we to find points of comparison and contrast with Gary Mc Kinnon?
that would be another fairy tale awaiting its future file release date.

by paul - (wsm pers. cap.) Fri Sep 11, 2009 14:07

Alan Turing's crime, in the eyes of the English establishment, was not being homosexual in itself, but being homosexual and from the wrong class. Homosexuality wasn't a problem for the upper classes (both houses of parliament had many members who were well known to be gay - well known, that is, amongst "society"*), it was the threat of someone from the "lower orders" having all that intellectual power (if they hadn't cracked Enigma, they would have lost the war in the Atlantic, and hence the war itself) and not being "onside", "one of us" or "clubbable". That's why they hounded him to death - a martyr to the English class system as much as to homophobia.

The grand irony was that it was the people like Antony Blunt & Guy Burgess who went to Cambridge like Turing and were equally homosexual, but were ignored due to their upper class status, that actually sold out to the KGB.

* Up until (quite a bit) after the second world war, "society" was taken to mean the English upper class only, the "lower" classes were considered no more part of society than cattle or donkeys. A scandal only occured when something (very often common knowledge amongst the upper classes) was exposed to the lower orders through the newspapers or other channels of popular culture (music hall, etc).

by Fred Johnston Fri Sep 11, 2009 17:57

Turing deserves a monument; in not only my own view, he won the war for the Allies. Churchill acted badly - well, Churchill was the lad who turned the British Army against the Welsh miners, so what could one expect. Turing has a street named for him in his home town; he underwent experimental chemical castration as well as imprisonment. More or less what Hitler would have done to him, but he suffered all of this at the hands of a British Establishment, many of whose members were closeting anyway and others, like Blunt and the Cambridge Spies, who betrayed their country and had male affairs to boot. Turing committed suicide by injecting an apple with cyanide and biting on it. There was something mythically symbolic about his going: but the British should be deeply ashamed of their treatment of the man who saved them from Nazi rule.

by hmm.., Fri Sep 11, 2009 19:35

If it's a postmortem apology then we are seeing acknowledgement of the coroner's judgement of suicide & it was no symbolic suicide. If it's a posthumous apology then we're all chattering away on the right channel. We might as well tweet as well. An apple laced with cyanide would taste a bit like äpfel strudel . Cyanaide smells of almonds so it's fair to presume it tastes of marzipan too.

So when we take all the sound bytes and the strip the framework of Gordon Brown's apology what are left with? what is the kernal? post mortem or posthumous?

I just wonder because I've read the same headline with what would seem the wrong word on most global media pick up on this. Maybe standards are slacking, stands to reason too. Less people on the uber-technician global human resource personal capital knowledge economy side of society and obviously less people capable of reading between a headline's choice of words on the t'other.

"boffin", indeed? do they breed?

by UD Fri Sep 11, 2009 20:31

Alan Turing is dead. Plucking the crow over word choice ain't gonna change that, its technically accurate to say 'post-mortem' as opposed to posthumous, which is a colourless sterile type of word.

by Fred Johnston Sat Sep 12, 2009 16:26

I can't make out a single statement 'hmmm' is making, though it is significant that he doesn't know the proper usage of 'less' and 'fewer.'

by hmmm.., Sat Sep 12, 2009 16:42

which is why the distinction is less important now to less of us, indeed were we to wince at it we would take out all the preopositions you leave at the end of your sentances too. Anyway - you confidently wrote that he had committed suicide by eating an apple injected with cyanide which meant you put all your undoubted authority behind of three previously outlined theories. (a) symbolic suicide to ensure a hagiography and place on apple computer logos within a generation (b) an ambigious death which his own mother did not believe was suicide (And she saw more of him than most) (c) it was an assassination.

How do you know which it was Fred? Are you well read on the Turing life and death? Or did you just lift that off another site? The official version appears to vary from one bite talken out of the fruit to several. The clenaer found the body at 8am on the 8th of June 1954. The coroner's report was held and the body was cremated within 5 days of presumed death (the night of the 7th) on the 12th of June.

By which time the apple would only have continued its usual decomposition pattern if it had not been laced with cyanide. If it had (as you claim been injected) it would have changed colour and texture
by the next day.
The Apple was never tested for cyanide.
the needle with which you are so sure the apple was injected - was never presented as evidence.

by UD Sat Sep 12, 2009 20:09

http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=1437

I do like the IMC stuff on this, there's very little going on via media here in terms of real
discussion on Turing. They like hmmmm though and also use 'Posthumous' as opposed
to post-mortem.

by Pete. Mon Sep 14, 2009 13:39

An Asteroid has been named after Turing.

See:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=10204%20Turing;or...0#orb

(NO.....not the computer game "Asteroids"........a REAL asteroid.)
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by Cyanic Mon Sep 14, 2009 14:46

Don't waste your brilliance being a tool for the military. They don't give a shit about anyone.

Alternatively,

"All governments are ultimately pretty nasty. The only difference is that with some the trains might run on time"

Alan turing, doesn't need their fake apologies. His elegant maths will be remembered long after most of these useless political buffoons in the british establishment are seen for the bumbling bad minded idiots they were.

by Pete. Mon Sep 14, 2009 16:22

"It was the threat of someone from the "lower orders" having all that intellectual power."

Not so Paul.
Turing was not from the "lower orders" by any stretch of the imagination.
Full story here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Quote:

"Alan Turing was conceived in Chhatrapur, Orissa, India.[4] His father, Julius Mathison Turing, was a member of the Indian Civil Service. Julius and wife Sara (née Stoney; 1881–1976, daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, chief engineer of the Madras Railways) wanted Alan to be brought up in England, so they returned to Maida Vale,[5] London, where Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912, as recorded by a blue plaque on the outside of the building, now the Colonnade Hotel."

by Fred Johnston Wed Sep 16, 2009 13:48

So that's why the British Establishment treated him so wonderfully, is it? Only in Ireland would an issue of class be dragged up.

by Kim Philby Wed Sep 16, 2009 14:05

Class was raised in the first place by Paul who claimed that Turing was working class. You didn't object to him mentioning this. Indirectly you raised the class issue by suggesting that Bunt and Burgess were members of the Establishment (ie ruling class).

by hmmm.., Wed Sep 16, 2009 16:22

I see we've now gone beyond marking Turing's genius, lamenting his treatment, pondering the truth of the official cause of death to an attempt to parse the class codes of late 19th century to mid 20th century Engish society.

wow. there's almost as much academic study written on that subject than on the Irish troubles.
big subject. Let's reach out for Debretts and the Who's who.

I can't find either the coroner's report on Turing's death or the court report on his trial for gross indecency that once criminal act which we know as sodomy or anal intercourse. It was the same crime that Oscar Wilde was sent to hard labour for in an age which was supposedly less enlightened than the period which forced Turing to take female hormones and grow tits & we might also presume get very hairy.

But we are somewhat into the "class discussion" thing. Turing was convicted for buggering a 19 year old just as Oscar Wilde's conviction relied on the testimonies of men who were at the time of their hiring for sex between 17 and 19 years old.

Oscar Wilde paid between 3 and 5 pounds for his services whereas due to the lack of online evidence I can't tell you how much Turing paid (if at all) for Arnold Murray, all we know is Arnold Murray came back to Turing's house and broke into it and stole things. Together with blackmail a pretty typical bitter aftermath of male prostitution in English society right up to this day, if we include Boy George's handling of his bit of rent in the last year.

I don't think this is about class - I think this is about the exercise of power through money.

English Class is not about birth, nor accent, nor education nor whether you call; a napkin a serviette, a sofa a settee, a livingroom a lounge, a loo a toilet, a patio a verandah, a lunch a dinner, a dinner a supper. Nor is it about what you say when someone mumbles incoherently ; pardon? sorry? what?
English Class is not about putting milk in a cup before or after tea nor is it about becoming a fellow in an oxbridge college or never passing a GCSE.

George Orwell as we know was born Eric Blair in India a son of a Raj employee who for the most part lorded over the Indians simply because their class profile in England was so low. That pattern is seen today by those English who choose to retire to Dubai and enjoy their servants and golden taps in their privvies and snake skin cushions on the setee in their lounge. We know from the semi-autobiographical novel of Orwell, "Keep the Aspadistra flying" that Orwell's education at Eton no more made him feel part of the Etonian class than I hazard to guess Wilde's stint at Magdalene college Oxford or Alan Turing's stint at Sherborne school.

They were outsiders. Neither cap in hand workers nor born to manor toffs. Oscar Wilde's supreme crime in the eyes of the ruling class (in my humble opinion) was not loving a lord, nor employing rentboys who were often underage but taking the piss out of his betters so comically and well . Many illustrious figures have employed underage rentboys. Ireland can even count on a former government minister whose scandal in the phoenix park ironically seemed to lead to his promotion as well as forgiveness.

George Orwell, whose tattoos on his knuckles [one hand depicted love the other hate] was only the epitomy of a class traitor if you believe he belonged to the class he went to school with. I paraphrase his words on the English class system end this comment "all class distinction between the English end when confronted with a foreigner."

by Pete. Wed Sep 16, 2009 16:22

Turing was awarded an OBE ("Order of the British Empire") in 1945.

Quote from the Wiki link I gave above:

"In 1945, Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services, but his work remained secret for many years."

He DID encounter snobbishness... from the Literary snobs in the British educational system.

Quote:
"Turing's natural inclination toward mathematics and science did not earn him respect with some of the teachers at Sherborne, whose definition of education placed more emphasis on the classics. His headmaster wrote to his parents: "I hope he will not fall between two stools. If he is to stay at Public School, he must aim at becoming educated. If he is to be solely a Scientific Specialist, he is wasting his time at a Public School".

Uber-Gifted Turing was obviously "not educated".
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by Pete. Fri Sep 18, 2009 19:14

By the way:

Class is real in England.

The Brits always seem to hate mathematical geniuses.

Especially when they are from the lower orders.

Poor working class Geoge Boole had to come to Cork to get a professorship.

This self taught lad who was a mathematical genius had a working class english accent.

His name was George Boole.

Boolean Algebra will always be studied.

He is buried in Mahon in Cork.