here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?Alan Turing by poet Matt Harvey, on the occasion of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s official posthumous apology to the mathematician and computer theorist. Originally read/published on the BBC Radio 4 broadcast Saturday Live, 12/9/2009.
(Via Language Log, from a mostly unrelated post on the language of homophobia in Jamaican culture, which is itself worth reading – depressing, but worthwhile)
