Renowned computer scientists and historians alike have hailed Alan Turing as the “father of the modern computer.” This is no small claim if one considers the tremendous impact computers have on humanity. Innovations like the internet and email have massive effects on everyday life in the modern world, from every call made from a cell phone, to every pixel of data seen on a high-definition television screen, computation of one kind or another is involved in some way. There are countless worthy topics for study in the history of computer science, yet there is one that until recently, has been largely forgotten by historians and scientists alike, and that is the contributions of Alan Turing to the world of computer science. To claim Turing is
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With the example of the Turing Machine, the boundary between government institutions and scientific discovery is found in the mutual desire to put the Allied forces in a more advantageous position than those of the Axis Powers; in this instance, this mutual desire allowed for two seemingly unrelated facets of society to collaborate toward a common goal. Moreover, the collaboration of these two facets of society in World War Two created a path of dependency that defined the relationship between scientific and political institutions in the field of computer science both internationally and in the United States for decades to come. After the Allies won World War Two with the help of the Turing Machine, the benefits of computer science research and its applications became apparent to not only the United States, but also to other countries around the world as well. As such, one can see how government and science have intersected in the United States through the development and production of the modern-day computer. With motivation from the Turing Machine and its impact in World War II, both the political and scientific communities have mutually thrived through one another’s contribution to the computer science community; this relationship can be observed, analyzed, and extrapolated upon to realize where the boundary between science and government …show more content…
Such a perspective is not particularly helpful in understanding the growth of American computation and specifically the research in the field. It is undoubtable that today there are far more computer scientists in the world than in 1945, and to chalk that increase entirely up to the work of one man is foolish; however, to fail to recognize individuals roles in the progress of a field is equally foolish and Alan Turing had a direct role in influencing American computer research. One example of this is Turing’s theories on artificial intelligence, a field not nearly flushed out even in the modern-day, “if anywhere has a claim to be the birthplace of AI, it is Bletchley Park. Turing was the first to carry out substantial research in the area. At least as early as 1941 he was thinking about machine intelligence.” It might seem outlandish that someone would be considering something as theoretical and innovative as artificial intelligence forty years before the integration of microelectromechanical systems into microchips but that is truly the extent to which Turing was an intellectual
With the example of the Turing Machine, the boundary between government institutions and scientific discovery is found in the mutual desire to put the Allied forces in a more advantageous position than those of the Axis Powers; in this instance, this mutual desire allowed for two seemingly unrelated facets of society to collaborate toward a common goal. Moreover, the collaboration of these two facets of society in World War Two created a path of dependency that defined the relationship between scientific and political institutions in the field of computer science both internationally and in the United States for decades to come. After the Allies won World War Two with the help of the Turing Machine, the benefits of computer science research and its applications became apparent to not only the United States, but also to other countries around the world as well. As such, one can see how government and science have intersected in the United States through the development and production of the modern-day computer. With motivation from the Turing Machine and its impact in World War II, both the political and scientific communities have mutually thrived through one another’s contribution to the computer science community; this relationship can be observed, analyzed, and extrapolated upon to realize where the boundary between science and government …show more content…
Such a perspective is not particularly helpful in understanding the growth of American computation and specifically the research in the field. It is undoubtable that today there are far more computer scientists in the world than in 1945, and to chalk that increase entirely up to the work of one man is foolish; however, to fail to recognize individuals roles in the progress of a field is equally foolish and Alan Turing had a direct role in influencing American computer research. One example of this is Turing’s theories on artificial intelligence, a field not nearly flushed out even in the modern-day, “if anywhere has a claim to be the birthplace of AI, it is Bletchley Park. Turing was the first to carry out substantial research in the area. At least as early as 1941 he was thinking about machine intelligence.” It might seem outlandish that someone would be considering something as theoretical and innovative as artificial intelligence forty years before the integration of microelectromechanical systems into microchips but that is truly the extent to which Turing was an intellectual