Turing`s Worlds, Oxford, UK, 23-24 June 2012

[Jonathan Bowen]

Turing`s Worlds event to celebrate the centenary of Alan Turing

http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/turing

Location:
Rewley House
1 Wellington Square
Oxford
Dates: Sat 23 to Sun 24 Jun 2012
Subject area: Mathematics
Fees: From £100.00
Applications being accepted (online booking available)
Course code: O11P222MAR
If you have any questions about this course, please email
ppda...@conted.ox.ac.uk


Overview

Alan Mathison Turing was born on 23 June, 1912 - exactly one hundred
years before this weekend meeting which celebrates his life and
achievements. Although most well-known for his work at Bletchley Park
in the pioneering days which saw the birth of modern practical
computing; Turing had achieved fame well before the second world war,
with a seminal account of theoretical computation and his solution to
the Entscheidungsproblem. An Olympic-class marathon runner, whose
refusal to conform to the narrow sexual standards of the day led to
persecution and an early death - Turing did fundamental research on
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Programming and even Mathematical
Biology.

This weekend attempts a rounded view of a polymath, one of the great
mathematicians of the twentieth century, his life and his times. We
will have a number of very distinguished speakers who have themselves
researched in some of the areas that Turing pioneered but our aim is
an accessible and informative account of Turing's multifarious
achievements.


Programme details

Saturday 23 June 2012

09:45 - Registration

10:00 - Welcome Address
Jonathan Bowen, London South Bank University, followed by

Turing and the Public Consciousness: Turing 2.0(12)
Sue Black, University College London, Turing and the Public
Consciousness: Turing 2.0(12)

10:30 - Decidability: The Entscheidungsproblem
Robin Whitty, London South Bank University

11.15 - Coffee / tea

11:45 - History of the Turing Hypothesis: The Universal Machine
John Tucker, Swansea University

12:30 Lunch

2:00 - Turing in the Modern World
Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury, NZ

2:45 - Turing in the age of the Internet and the quantum computer
Samson Abramsky, Oxford University

3:30 - Tea

4:00 - Turing in the History of Software
Cliff Jones, Newcastle University

4:45 - Turing in the History of Computers
Martin Campbell-Kelly, Warwick University

5:30 - Close

6:15 - Reception

7:00 - Dinner

8:30 - Congruent Worlds: Turing, Lovelace and Babbage
Doron Swade, Royal Holloway, Univ. of London

9:15 - Close


Sunday 24 June 2012

9:30 - AI and the Turing Test
Teresa Numerico, University of Rome 3, Italy

10:15 - Morphogenesis Then and Now
Philip Maini, Oxford University

11:00 - Coffee / tea

11:30 - ACTION THIS DAY
Simon Greenish, Director of the Bletchley Park Trust & Jean Valentine,
Bletchley Park Wren

12:30 - Lunch

2:00 - Decoding Alan Turing: A Biographer's Experience
Andrew Hodges, Oxford University

2:45 - Why is Max Newman Part of the Turing Story?
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Middlesex University

3:30 - Turing Our Contemporary
Darrel Ince, Open University

4:00 - Close


This weekend school is offered in associations with the British
Society for the History of Mathematics.

[Frederick Williams]

Jonathan Bowen wrote:

> Alan Mathison Turing [...] whose

> refusal to conform to the narrow sexual standards of the day led to

> persecution and an early death [...]

Refusal to conform = broke the law. The law punished him for it just as
it punished thousands of others. Why Turing gets mentioned more than
the others is a mystery to me. One of Gordon Brown more bizarre acts
was to apologize for the way Turing was treated; and what about all the
others, Mr Brown?

[Another of Brown's bizarre acts: criticizing Cameron for having gone to
Eton. What? A boy is responsible for his parents' choice of school?
Going to one of the best schools in the country is wrong?]

--
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by
this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting

[Tom]

Frederick Williams wrote:
> Jonathan Bowen wrote:
> > Alan Mathison Turing [...] whose
> > refusal to conform to the narrow sexual standards of the day led to
> > persecution and an early death [...]
>
> Refusal to conform = broke the law.  The law punished him for it just as
> it punished thousands of others.  Why Turing gets mentioned more than
> the others is a mystery to me.  One of Gordon Brown more bizarre acts
> was to apologize for the way Turing was treated; and what about all the
> others, Mr Brown?
>
> [Another of Brown's bizarre acts: criticizing Cameron for having gone to
> Eton.  What?  A boy is responsible for his parents' choice of school?
> Going to one of the best schools in the country is wrong?]

It is not my intention to make a pretense of understanding politics in
the least bit, but imho, politicians are mostly clerks who just read
scripts, aren't they? Like you previously said (and which I very much
liked), it is not just possible to reason about ethics, it is
necessary to do so. So, with new technologies (based on the work of
geniuses like Alan Turing) changing culture and pushing globalisation
forward (and with still strong culturally varied nationalisms all
around the place), a common egalitarian (as opposed to nepotistic)
ethics is called for. The victimization of AT's actions was a vehicle
for putting the world right before (right as it felt at the time) and
is part of a wider propaganda for creating alternative life styles
today (to put the world right, as right feels today).

Why does Turing get so much attention and not the others? Please wait
for the others, they might eventually get their chance and their
examples will come into sunlight (or lightning) when the weather's
right :D

And imho, there's nothing wrong with being educated and particularly
in Eton. I myself am very lucky to have gone to Oxford (I slept
overnight in a BB, got a sandwich the next day, looked at the town and
went back to London to go on working in the kitchen). But like I said,
imho, most politicians just read scripts. I don't know what exactly
they teach you at Eton (except exceptional manners), but I am pretty
sure that Eton's alumni are damn good reads. I noticed that those who
didn't go to Eton try to make up for the lack of skill in this matter
by exaggerated speech mannerism (like e.g. repeating an introductory
sentence several times). I would be jealous if others could read
better than me.

Btw, why do you get so upset? Most of the world has never heard of
Turing or Brown and they are happy with that. Not accidentally,
they're the same people who laugh at my trying to understand math and
e.g. politics properly.

Please don't laugh :D

Please say something :D

Like e.g. "Tom, you're are an idiot, shut up" :D

Tom

P.S. Sorry, I'm just an idiot :D

PS2 And you know what? England is the most beautiful country in the
world :D And Oxford is truly lovely! :D

[Michael Stemper]

In article <4FA02B4C...@btinternet.com>, Frederick Williams <freddyw...@btinternet.com> writes:
>Jonathan Bowen wrote:

>> Alan Mathison Turing [...] whose
>> refusal to conform to the narrow sexual standards of the day led to
>> persecution and an early death [...]
>
>Refusal to conform = broke the law. The law punished him for it just as
>it punished thousands of others.

In my country, as recently as 150 years ago, slavery was the law. Sad,
but true. A slave who escaped was violating the law, just like Turing
was. Simply a different law. An escaped slave could be physically
assaulted, captured, and dragged back to servitude. An escaped slave
could even be shot, for violating the law. (Not the preferred approach,
since they were capital equipment.)

Despite the fact that the escaped slaves were in violation of the law,
and the slave trackers were upholding it, my sympathies are entirely
with the "law-breakers".

"It's not a good idea, it's just the law."

--
Michael F. Stemper
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The FAQ for rec.arts.sf.written is at:
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Please read it before posting.

[Ben Bacarisse]

Frederick Williams <freddyw...@btinternet.com> writes:

> Jonathan Bowen wrote:
>
>> Alan Mathison Turing [...] whose
>> refusal to conform to the narrow sexual standards of the day led to
>> persecution and an early death [...]
>
> Refusal to conform = broke the law. The law punished him for it just as
> it punished thousands of others. Why Turing gets mentioned more than
> the others is a mystery to me. One of Gordon Brown more bizarre acts
> was to apologize for the way Turing was treated; and what about all the
> others, Mr Brown?

You mean the others he specifically mentioned in the apology or some
other "others" that he did not?

"Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as
he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly."
[Gordon Brown, PM, writing in The Telegraph, 10th Sep 2009]

<snip>
--
Ben.

[Tom]

mstem...@walkabout.empros.com wrote:

Yeah right, finally nowhere in the world is slavery formally allowed.

Tom

"In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, in
practice there is."

-- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

[Tom]

Ben Bacarisse wrote:

He should have apologized for the Europeans' crusades and for their
having discovered America in the first place.

Tom