
Beware the Alan Turing fetish - KC8ZKF
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/beware-alan-turing-fetish.html
======
SiVal
Turing was extraordinary, but was he better than Einstein and von Neumann and
Claude Shannon and Richard Feynman combined? Because at roughly the same era
Turing would have been hatching England's Silicon Valley, Einstein, von
Neumann, Shannon, Feynman and others like them were in New Jersey, along all
the other smart guys at Princeton, combined with the booming US economy, all
the defense spending, with AT&T, joined by Bell Labs, lasers, the
transistor...

...And still Silicon Valley ended up in the orchards of California, not the
New York suburbs of New Jersey.

Then there's that smelly hippy Steve Jobs, nobody's idea of a brilliant
information theorist, who revolutionizes industry after industry. Without
Wozniak, he would have done what? Founded Jamba Juice? Had an art gallery in
Carmel? Who knows?

Sure, maybe a butterfly in Brazil can produce a hurricane in Florida, but
speculating that a _specific_ butterfly, even an unusually large one, might
have produced a hurricane eventually is absurd.

~~~
derleth
> Then there's that smelly hippy Steve Jobs

... who was a marketing genius, especially when he had Wozniak's brilliant
design to sell. Jobs _was_ great at something, but it _wasn't_ computer
technology. It was marketing. NeXT is a prime example: Coolest computers on
the block (according to a lot of people), but they went nowhere without the
Apple team backing Jobs up.

And, once Jobs went back to Apple and got the Apple engineers behind him, NeXT
became OS X and started to succeed.

~~~
Zenst
Jobs gift was to be able to think like a consumer clearer than the consumer
and at the same time techinicaly minded enough to get the best from the techs
who are so obvistacted from the end user mind-set wise that they need that
grounding that Jobs gave them.

Not saying all Apple products are stoner friendly, but they wont give you a
bad vibe on a acid trip with there sharp edges. Food for thought but nomatter
how you think of him, he stood above the crowd at a level he defined.

~~~
nitrogen
_Jobs gift was to be able to think like a consumer clearer than the consumer
and at the same time techinicaly minded enough to get the best from the techs
who are so obvistacted from the end user mind-set wise that they need that
grounding that Jobs gave them._

What word is "obvistacted" standing in for? A Google (EN_US) search returns
two results, both of which are this post.

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w1ntermute
> This brilliant, charming, odd, driven workaholic could have turned the old
> industrial heartlands of Lancashire into a British Silicon Valley and
> perhaps America’s brightest and best would have flooded east across the
> Atlantic.

This just another example of the British yearning for bygone days in which
their country was the center of the world.

~~~
untog
Is there anything particularly British about that, though? Harking back to a
"better time" in the past seems like it's almost a global trait.

~~~
thronemonkey
Nostalgia is universal, but Britain is in the somewhat unique position of
having once been a hyperpower and today being substantially less relevant on
the world stage.

~~~
olavk
Not that unique actually. Many (perhaps most) countries in Europe have _some_
period in the past when they were much more powerful than they are now.

~~~
commandar
There's a reason why a huge portion of the population in the western
hemisphere speaks Spanish.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
And why quite a bit of Africa speaks French...

------
jimhefferon
Often in the minds of people who are not involved in an area, that area become
epitomized by a person. For science it is Albert Einstein. In the US Civil
Rights movement it is Martin Luther King. In computers it is becoming Turing.

Turing is pretty good, I think.

~~~
bostonpete
You think anyone not involved in computing knows who Alan Turing was? Maybe in
the UK he's more of a household name than the US... (?)

~~~
jiggy2011
Most people who are aware of WW2 history know who turing is. In the UK anyway.

~~~
phaus
As a 30 year-old American with a mild interest in WWII history, I had never
heard of Alan Turing until I became interested in computer science. While I
hadn't heard of him, I did learn about the Enigma machine in high school.

Also, I have only run into one or two people who recognized his name that
weren't into computers.

Sadly, there are lots of great men and women who don't get the recognition
they deserve. For example, Thomas Paine, a man who played a significant part
in America's decision to declare independence. When he published "The Age of
Reason" after the war, America responded by pretending he never existed for a
couple hundred years.

------
damienkatz
Turing is amazing, but I've often felt the Turing Test had no real scientific
or mathematical basis, and if proposed by a far less famous and influential
person, would be largely (and rightly) ignored.

~~~
VBprogrammer
I'm not sure why you were down voted for that. It's obviously just an opinion,
but you acknowledged that. It certainly wasn't unrelated, disrespectful or
inappropriate.

My only argument against that would be to point out that a great many things
have no basis in science or mathematics but are still considered to have
value. For example philosophy or art.

While the test might have no logical basis, it does form a base line, in the
same way that the a unit of measurement (the kilogram for example) may have no
other logical basis, it is something which can can be agreed on and thus
compared against.

~~~
Danieru
I think the issue is how damienkatz's comment implied that Turing only had the
Turing Test to his credit. If anything the Turing Test is a game, or thought
experiment, and only the tip of Turing's accomplishments.

~~~
jlgreco
Agreed, that is why I downvoted him. It is one of Turings greatest known ideas
(commonly known of to some degree among the general population) likely because
it involves provocative claims and conclusions (particularly so for its time).

But to claim that Turing isn't great because you have an issue with the Turing
Test is like claiming Einstein wasn't great because you think his anti-nuclear
activism was misplaced. Rather missing the point of why we consider the man
important.

~~~
phaus
He never said or implied that Turing isn't great, but he did say "Turing IS
Amazing." He just happens to think the Turing Test is overrated.

~~~
jlgreco
In my experience, when somebody starts a monologue with the pattern
_"[assertion], but"_ , what follows is a more honest presentation of their
opinions than the initial assertion.

------
scorpioxy
I know of Alan Turing after reading the book by Hodges and a theoretical
computation course at college. Definitely a brilliant man but I agree with
what is said in this article.

Many, many people contributed to the computing world we have today whether it
is theoretical or practical and we will never know what might have happened
with Turing alive. Why not talk about von Neumann as the father of the modern
computer? Simply because even though one man might have had a big influence on
a specific field, many more after him would have had a big impact and nobody
can predict the different outcomes. Standing on the shoulders of giants and so
on..

------
alayne
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3260639>

~~~
Groxx
^ previous submission, ~ 1 year ago, plenty of comments.

please include a description or _something_ next time, instead of a bare link.
Otherwise it's hard to assess the relevancy without clicking: [http://i0.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/000/681/wha...](http://i0.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/000/681/what-you-did-there-i-see-
it.thumbnail.jpg)

------
throwaway312
Notice that neither JGC nor any of the responders here have mentioned Alonzo
Church, the inventor of Lambda Calculus, and a man whose contributions to
computer science were arguably every bit as fundamental as Turing's.

My prediction is that if Turing ever gains the sort of widespread recognition
that JGC wants and that Turing probably deserves, Church will become the
Monsieur Curie of their intellectual marriage who for reasons of political
correctness will best be left unacknowledged.

------
surfingdino
While we prise Alan Turing, we should not forget the efforts of Rejewski
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski> Różycki
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Różycki> and Zygalski
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Zygalski>

------
msutherl
A large contributing factor to the current trend of Turing fetishism is the
fact that so many people in a range of fields read "Computing Machinery and
Intelligence" in University as an introduction to the problem of artificial
intelligence. It was the first paper assigned in at least 3 of my classes.

For many people, this is the first time that they consider such issues and so
Turing is solidified in their mind as: 'old mathematician guy who invented
computers and the idea of artificial intelligence'.

Given the authoritative atmosphere of university and an absence of any of the
surrounding history, it's easy to imagine that people would get attached to a
singular figure. And indeed they have.

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tahirpopat
Hugely interesting, I knew very little about him but after reading this, I am
going on a learning spree! Having lived in Britain, I must admit they do yearn
for the days when they were the centre of the word and the tone of the article
does resemble this.

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6ren
Nice postscript about ARM, a British company.

------
akavel
[2011]...

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batgaijin
If I was considering computer science in the UK during the 50's, I would have
immediately left after Turing's death.

That man could have lead a revolution, could have started one of the most
influential and powerful corporations on this planet. He had that potential.
To say otherwise is disingenuous.

~~~
untog
I think it's disingenuous to make assumptions about what anyone may have done
in an imagined future.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Or to make assumptions about what you may have done in an imagined past.

