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Alan Turing As A Hero

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Alan Turing is a rare figure amongst the many historical worthies of post-war Britain. He would, at first, seem an unlikely candidate to become a popular icon. He worked within a comparatively novel and arcane scientific field, the central concepts of which are still only fully understood by specialists. It was one which emerged from mostly from his own high-level theoretical reasoning and debating the earlier work of the similarly obscure Kurt Gödel upon whether mathematical processes could truly solve any definable problem. 1 His life did not contain that many spectacular events, rather slow, grand, specific achievements that often seemed purely academic at the time. Many of these were not even publically known until after his death, due …show more content…

Previous studies have explored Turing as either a historical figure or as part of a wider scientific or military paradigm, but very little comment has been made upon why and how he has been selected as a popular hero. If comment has been made upon Turing's resurgence it has tended to be along the lines of assigning Turing's rise to a vague notion of progress, without much analysis as to what has allowed and governed it. More generalised studies of scientific and engineering heroism and its mechanics have been created before for select time periods by historians with an interest in meta-analysis, such as Christine MacLeod and Richard Yeo. 3 4 But nothing remotely similar has been attempted for Turing's time period. The mechanics and culture of defined heroism in the history computer science are desperately underexplored, in part due to the fledgling nature of the discipline compared to maths of …show more content…

Turing has been promoted primarily because of popular factors. These factors can determine who within the history of computer science transcends isolated example of academic analysis to become a popular hero known throughout a wider culture or sub-culture. There are a definable set of common factors conductive to promotion at present for scientific biography, and ones particular to computer science as well. In this context, “present” is taken to mean from 1989 to the present day, as opposed to the more loaded concept of modernity. These factors are held to be evident in the sources and rhetoric which have surrounded Turing, indicating what has made his biographical narrative more conductive than usual to memorialisation. To give an example, a factor helpful to promoting Turing would be the late twentieth century growth in general enthusiasm for promoting and studying the history of cultural and sexual minorities. My hypothesis is also that the details of these factors can govern promotion and depiction in certain ways. Particular nuances are evident as to what the public generally view as unambiguously heroic and thus admirable. For example, Andrew Hodges has already discussed how popular sources tend to portray Turing's sexuality as a passive trait, as opposed to a radical act. It can be theorised that narrative is sometimes altered from a exact retelling because of these difficulties in fitting it to a preconceived idea

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