Pardoning Alan Turing

BBC News - Petition to pardon computer pioneer Alan Turing started

You know, that’s one other bit of news I meant to tell you about …

You probably know I’m something of a very amateur technology.

Very amateur, I should stress: I really don’t have the budget to be anything but.

I sort of also take an interest in computer’s history.

Mostly because some of it started here, in the UK.

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Probably more than you or I could could imagine, actually.

One figure looms large in the history of modern computing, though.

That of academic, Alan Turing: the man who defined computers with his On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, and who went on to build and run some of the cryptanalysis teams at Bletchley Park.

Turing was gay.

And, as homosexuality was illegal, back then, he was criminalised.

And committed suicide in the 1950s, after eating a poisoned apple.

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Which has been something of a point of contention for many, me included.

You seen, I’ve long felt that ones sexuality is on a par with being left or right-handed, gender, ethnicity, what-have-you.* They’re just something that’s thereº.

At ANY rate … ?

At any rate, many people have felt that Alan Turing should have been given some sort of medal for his war work.

Or, if nothing else … ?

If nothing else, have his 1952 indecency conviction quashed.

The man was a war hero whose key theories drive much of the modern world.

That Pardon would be something I think.

* Granted, there’s racism, sexism, homophobia: and even — a trivial thing that I emphasise more than most — mild prejudice against being left handed. These are thing’s I’ve always felt are wrong: but unfortunately, a lot more present than we like to admit.

º Twenty or thirty years ago, I might have added ‘and can’t be helped’. Sod that, if you’ll excuse the phrase. I’ve ever so slowly come to realise the phrase implies someone needs help getting over the disability of being black, left handed or a woman. I’m pretty sure I know one or two woman, black people and LGBT community members — and other southpaws — who’d have a word or two to say …