The Turing Guide

This volume celebrates the various facets of Alan Turing (1912–1954), the British mathematician and computing pioneer, widely considered as the father of computer science. It is aimed at the general reader, with additional notes and references for those who wish to explore the life and work of Turing more deeply. The book is divided into eight parts, covering different aspects of Turing’s life and work. Part I presents various biographical aspects of Turing, some from a personal point of view. Part II presents Turing’s universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation. His 1936 paper on this subject is widely seen as providing the starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. Part III presents Turing’s working on codebreaking during World War II. While the War was a disastrous interlude for many, for Turing it provided a nationally important outlet for his creative genius. It is not an overstatement to say that without Turing, the War would probably have lasted longer, and may even have been lost by the Allies. The sensitive nature of Turning’s wartime work meant that much of this has been revealed only relatively recently. Part IV presents Turing’s post-War work on computing, both at the National Physical Laboratory and at the University of Manchester. He made contributions to both hardware design, through the ACE computer at the NPL, and software, especially at Manchester. Part V covers Turing’s contribution to machine intelligence (now known as Artificial Intelligence or AI). Although Turing did not coin the term, he can be considered a founder of this field which is still active today, authoring a seminal paper in 1950. Part VI covers morphogenesis, Turing’s last major scientific contribution, on the generation of seemingly random patterns in biology and on the mathematics behind such patterns. Interest in this area has increased rapidly in recent times in the field of bioinformatics, with Turing’s 1952 paper on this subject being frequently cited. Part VII presents some of Turing’s mathematical influences and achievements. Turing was remarkably free of external influences, with few co-authors – Max Newman was an exception and acted as a mathematical mentor in both Cambridge and Manchester. Part VIII considers Turing in a wider context, including his influence and legacy to science and in the public consciousness. Reflecting Turing’s wide influence, the book includes contributions by authors from a wide variety of backgrounds. Contemporaries provide reminiscences, while there are perspectives by philosophers, mathematicians, computer scientists, historians of science, and museum curators. Some of the contributors gave presentations at Turing Centenary meetings in 2012 in Bletchley Park, King’s College Cambridge, and Oxford University, and several of the chapters in this volume are based on those presentations – some through transcription of the original talks, especially for Turing’s contemporaries, now aged in their 90s. Sadly, some contributors died before the publication of this book, hence its dedication to them. For those interested in personal recollections, Chapters 2, 3, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 36 will be of interest. For philosophical aspects of Turing’s work, see Chapters 6, 7, 26–31, and 41. Mathematical perspectives can be found in Chapters 35 and 37–39. Historical perspectives can be found in Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 21–25, 34, and 40. With respect to Turing’s body of work, the treatment in Parts II–VI is broadly chronological. We have attempted to be comprehensive with respect to all the important aspects of Turing’s achievements, and the book can be read cover to cover, or the chapters can be tackled individually if desired. There are cross-references between chapters where appropriate, and some chapters will inevitably overlap. We hope that you enjoy this volume as part of your library and that you will dip into it whenever you wish to enter the multifaceted world of Alan Turing

Only Human: a book review of The Turing Guide

This is a review of The Turing Guide (2017), written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others. The review includes a new sociological approach to the problem of computability in physics

Does the solar system compute the laws of motion?

The counterfactual account of physical computation is simple and, for the most part, very attractive. However, it is usually thought to trivialize the notion of physical computation insofar as it implies ‘limited pancomputationalism’, this being the doctrine that every deterministic physical system computes some function. Should we bite the bullet and accept limited pancomputationalism, or reject the counterfactual account as untenable? Jack Copeland would have us do neither of the above. He attempts to thread a path between the two horns of the dilemma by buttressing the counterfactual account with extra conditions intended to block certain classes of deterministic physical systems from qualifying as physical computers. His theory is called the ‘algorithm execution account’. Here we show that the algorithm execution account entails limited pancomputationalism, despite Copeland’s argument to the contrary. We suggest, partly on this basis, that the counterfactual account should be accepted as it stands, pancomputationalist warts and all

The Enigma behind the Good–Turing formula

Finding the total number of species in a population based on a finite sample is a difficult but practically important problem. In this snapshot, we will attempt to shed light on how during World War II, two cryptanalysts, Irving J. Good and Alan M. Turing, discovered one of the most widely applied formulas in statistics. The formula estimates the probability of missing some of the species in a sample drawn from a heterogeneous population. We will provide some intuition behind the formula, show its wide range of applications, and give a few technical details

The Impact of Alan Turing: Formal Methods and Beyond

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. In this paper, we discuss the influence and reputation of Alan Turing since his death in 1954, specifically in the field of formal methods, especially for program proving, but also in a much wider context. Although he received some recognition during his lifetime, this image was tarnished by the controversy at the time of his death. While he was known and appreciated in scientific circles, he did not enter the public’s consciousness for several decades. A turning point was the definitive biography produced by Andrew Hodges in 1983 but, even then, the tide did not turn very rapidly. More recent events, such as the celebrations of his birth centenary in 2012 and the official British royal pardon in 2013, have raised Turing’s fame and popularity among the informed general public in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Cultural works in the arts featuring Turing have enhanced his profile still further. Thus, the paper discusses not only Turing’s scientific impact, especially for formal methods, but in addition his historical, cultural, and even political significance. Turing’s academic ‘family tree’ in terms of heritage and legacy is also covered

Computational Culture and A.I.: Challenging human identity and curatorial practice

This paper records a half-day Symposium of invited talks on the first day of the EVA London 2020 Conference. It continues a series from the previous four EVA London Symposiums held since 2016 (Bowen & Giannini 2016; Bowen, Giannini & Polmeer 2017; Bowen, Giannini, et al. 2018; 2019)

Museums and Digital Culture: New perspectives and research

This richly illustrated book offers new perspectives and research on how digital culture is transforming museums in the 21st century, as they strive to keep pace with emerging technologies driving cultural and social change, played out not only in today’s pervasive networked environment of the Internet and Web, but in everyday life, from home to work and on city streets. In a world where digital culture has redefined human information behavior as life in code and digits, increasingly it dominates human activity and communication. These developments have radically changed the expectations of the museum visitor, real and virtual, the work of museum professionals and, most prominently, the nature of museum exhibitions, while digital art and life in a digitally saturated world is changing our ways of seeing, doing, our senses and aesthetics. Overall, this book creates a new picture of the 21st-century museum field. As museums become shared spaces with their communities, local, national and global and move from collection-centered to user-/visitor-centered institutions, they are assuming new roles and responsibilities tied to new goals for engaging their audience, conveying meaning through collections, creating learning experiences and importantly, connecting to daily digital life and culture integral to the museum ecosystem. Our studies of recent exhibitions at museums leading change are used to exemplify new directions, while they point to a reimagined vision for museums of the future at the heart of which is the integration of digital culture and visitor experience and participation in real and virtual space

Computing the Future: Digital encounters in art and science when da Vinci meets Turing

Computing the future, as life and research moves to the Internet, we are engaged increasingly in digital encounters from present to past and into the future with real people, events and documents. This paper focuses on the newly born-digital relationship between Alan Turing, father of computer science, and Leonardo da Vinci, master of Renaissance art and science – both revered as visionary geniuses, prophets of the future. Given the continued growth of digitised materials that are daily entering global consciousness, it is only relatively recently that both da Vinci’s notebooks and paintings, and Turing’s archive, are online and searchable. Thus we are able for the first time to relatively easily juxtapose and compare their work, and see that they have much in common in terms of what it means to human in science, art and the natural world, from da Vinci’s in-depth studies of the mechanisms of the human body, mind, and soul, foundational to his art, and to Turing’s discoveries in Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and morphogenesis. Considering their points of concurrence in the digital world brings into focus our global network of digital places and spaces, where science, art, and nature, including real and artificial life, become unbounded

Turing’s Sunflowers: Public research and the role of museums

In recent years, public engagement in museums is increasingly being influenced by the paradigm of “citizen science”, that is, active participation in research teams by members of the general public with no formal training in the field of research concerned. This paper provides an overview of citizen science approaches which museums can deploy using online platforms, digital tools and apps. It also aims to highlight challenges and innovations, as well as possible opportunities for cultural organisations to include public participation in research and knowledge creation