Following up on my post from a few days ago, a short appreciation of Alan Turing by noted sf author Frederik Pohl:
The close of Pride Month seems an apt time to talk about Alan Turing, inventor of the famed Turing Test for identifying independent intelligence in computers, worked for the British code breakers in World War II, and was one of the leading figures who successfully cracked the secret German messages, a feat which played a considerable part in the victory over Hitler.
Pohl is one of my all-time favourite sf authors and his blog The Way the Future Blogs is an excellent updating of his classic memoir The Way the Future Was.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
I'm off to a wedding this weekend, so no posts for a few days. But I wanted to give you a heads up that six computers will be competing in a Turing test on Sunday.
The competitors, named Alice, Brother Jerome, Elbot, Eugene Goostman, Jabberwacky and Ultra Hal, must converse for five minutes and…
The government of the UK has officially apologized for its past abuse of Alan Turing. Here is the full statement.
2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and…
What is your list of essential science-fiction books? I composed mine back on December 27, 2005 and I still agree with myself on it. Click on the spider-clock icon to see the comments on the original post.
A couple of months ago, Brandon (of Siris) wrote a post in which he listed twenty must-read…
So they're remaking The Day the Earth Stood Still? So what? I have more respect for Keanu Reeves after seeing the recent film A Scanner Darkly, and anyway he's much better an actor than Will Ferrell, who did such a good job in Stranger than Fiction to my surprise.
But why angst over a remake?…