I’m teaching Turing’s article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” today. Its amazing how our perceptions of texts change; I always liked Turing’s article, I just see different things in it now. Let see if Mr. King reads this blog.
What has me freaking out is some of the things that Turing is saying in section 5. It may be that I never read these sections, usually this article is excerpted (modern folks don’t quite need the lesson on digital computers that Turing had to give in 1950). Turing says “[t]he system of the ‘universe as a whole’ is such that quite small errors in the initial conditions can have an overwhelming effect at a later time.” (440) This is nearly identical to a claim made by Lorenz in the late ‘60 when formulating the earliest statements of what came to be called “chaos theory”. But wait, there’s more, “The displacement of a single electron by a billionth of a centimetre at one moment might make teh difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later, or escaping.” (440) Can you say ‘the butterfly effect’?
Sure sure, science is really a vast network of inter-relations where ideas are born and traded far more extensively than the metaphor of “invention” allows but, dammit, Turing is cool; give the guy who invented the machine that broke the Enigma code some credit, will you (he didn’t even appear in that sucky movie Enigma that was about the place and people he worked with.
Mr. King? As in Wah King? I don’t think he reads this blog . . . or am I being obtuse about the King you reference?
Have you read the recent book about the Enigma, I think it is “Enigma: The battle for the Code.” It has tons of stuff on Turing, and it is right up your alley.
That was the king I was wondering about. I didn’t think he read it but I figured if he did he would be down with chaos and Turing.
I haven’t had a chance to check out that book on breaking the Enigma. I am reading the book Long Way Gone though, which is quite good.