Epilogue
Hats off to Alan Turing and his memory and his legacy. We call ourselves civilised but we commit heinous crimes against those who serve humanity well and decently and beyond the call of duty. We have made some progress on the LGBTQ front but we are still far from achieving the right to call ourselves civilised. We are still often ignorant, fearful, hateful and bigoted. We still too often use our prejudices as weapons to divide people and to punish people for being different. We think we have changed since 1954, but right now we are persecuting Chelsea Manning for being brave and principled and serving her country well. And for being different.
Alan Turing was a genius who helped the Allies win WW2, but he had a boyfriend, so he was hauled into court, publicly shamed and ordered to undergo chemical castration – a pointless process administered in utter fucked-up medical ignorance, driven by ignorant fear.
He committed suicide at age 41.
Genius? Mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist, Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
We stamped out his life sixty five years ago today. Because he was different.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
epilogue paraphrased from AKALib on dailykos – thanks!
Bewilderbeast Droppings 