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Turing In Vietnam War

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Turing's narrative could not have reached the public sphere, let alone become a political talking point, without significant academic groundwork. Scientific biographers and historians have provided the first vital building blocks for others to shape Turing into a distinct cultural presence. However, truly original secondary material is still scarce. 1 Surprisingly few volumes have been dedicated solely to studying Turing alone, of which most date from 1992 onwards. This is perhaps due to the fact that accounts of him and his primary documentation remained partially classified and scattered for at least twenty years due to the nature of his work and personal life. Other computer scientists with a more open public presence and a higher profile …show more content…

Although Turing developed unclassified projects elsewhere, the years 1939-43 are vital to understanding his work as a computer scientist. The British security services released information on Turing slowly, at their own deliberately inscrutable discretion. For an example of the problems posed, a full and detailed account of how Turing supervised the solving of the mathematical problems surrounding Enigma was produced ready for publication by A.H. Mahon in June 1945. It was not cleared for public access until long after it would have been revolutionary in securing Turing's reputation as a war hero, in 1999. 2 3 Likewise, government suppression meant that vital oral contributors to reconstructing Turing's narrative such as Tommy Flowers were effectively silenced until the late nineties. 4 Due to the chaotic, uneven nature of post-war disposal and the personal nature of many documents, there have been more practical problems with gathering material as well. It has taken a long time for evidence to be found and fully collaborated. It can still be reasonably assumed that everything that survived from Bletchley and Manchester has not yet been found. …show more content…

It is worth noting that Turing and his concepts first surprisingly cropped up in a mainstream piece of genre defining speculative science fiction relying on real research for ideas six years prior. As Andrew Hodges notes, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick drew upon the concepts in On Computable Numbers and the idea of playing an “Imitation Game” with a virtual intelligence. They created a sinister exploration of the potential for an AI to deceive and kill in the film (later book) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 9 10

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