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Fight Begins To Secure Turing Papers For Bletchley Park Museum
Blacklaw writes "Auction house Christie's is planning to sell offprints of Alan Turing's early work for an estimated £500,000 — and the fight has begun to raise the money so UK codebreaking museum and charity Bletchley Park can house the documents in the building where Turing performed his war-winning work and birthed the concept of a modern 'universal computer.' If the money isn't raised, the papers could disappear into a private archive, never to be seen again."
You are trolling, but for the sake of accuracy here is what is generally acknowledged to be the case.
- after the war he struggled to get the kind of role and financial support he should have been given without a quibble or a bat of the eye - he eventually got a very good job at the University of Manchester, which is a great place, but it is amazing that he wasn't treated as a national treasure (was it 2 of Hilberts challenges he solved? Even allowing for the secrecy around the work during the war someone in the know should have pushed it on that basis)
- he was targeted for blackmail due to being gay when it was illegal
- the police arrested him and he was prosecuted and punished with hormone therapy
- the depression caused by the therapy and the awful behavior of society towards him, and his own personal isolation caused him to take his life
- he did it in such a way to allow his mother to go on believing that it was an accident
In 1956 the UK government had no reason to kill him, in fact it never did - quite the opposite. Instead they treated a great man with indifference and contempt because of his sexuality. I can't say that I can think of a more pathetic story in all senses of the word.
If you want to feel worse about it (as a human) then think what might have been if he had lived 25 more years and had enjoyed the appropriate support
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Shit happens. It would be nice to have the papers at Bletchley Park but not for £500,000 - there are so many other things that sort of money could do.
A copy? That would be piracy and that would mean a fine much larger fine then anybody can pay. And making copies would take away the initiative for Mr. Turing to write any new papers. So please don't do that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Plus I'm sure there's pictures and copies of those papers around. I'm all for a bit of fetichism and idolatry, but I'm surprised geeks play at it too.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
They still killed him - by hate and indifference. You do not have to pull the trigger to kill a man. I fully agree that this is one of the most pathetic stories of the modern age.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
His work was funded by the people, built on the knowledge of the people, is part of the heritage of the people and its content belongs to the people. At worst, the "owner" should be required to maintain its condition and make it publicly available, and to provide digital copies which enter the public domain. Just like any item of antiquity or listed building.
These are off-prints, i.e., free sample copies of a journal article that authors are given.
Chances are, you can already go to a good university library and make photocopies of the articles.
If your university has a subscription, you can also see the articles on JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=au:(Turing)
This belongs in a MUSEUM. </Indiana_jones>
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This is an incredibly sad story, I always found it one of the most hateful stories about human behaviour but also a good lesson. People with extraordinary talent are used as long as they are needed, then the 'war' is over and the public doesn't care about them anymore. Then they turn into just another pawn that can be used for political games because they are 'different' in some way. Your past performances in no way protect you, as people take those for granted. In a way, it's the comparable to how soldiers/war heroes are treated, for example those with post traumatic stress. Locked away and forgotten.
I'm surprised too. I mean, what's the interest in them being in the museum? It's not like they're original manuscripts, they're just the first print runs. Turing's papers are interesting for their content, not for the paper that they're printed on, and no one is going to go to a museum to read a paper (awkwardly displayed in a glass case in a dimly lit room so the print doesn't fade), when you can easily grab a PDF online. Turing's papers are fascinating, and I'd expect computer scientists to read them, but I don't see the attraction in collecting the offprints.
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It's a troll because you completely disregard history. It was not a selectively enforced law. Try reading The Ballad of Reading Gaol some time - lots of people went to prison for sodomy, the only requirement was evidence.
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So they didn't hold the weapon, but they destroyed his life until he ended it. Yeah, I'd say they killed him...
I believe it was intended to reduce libido (chemical castration). "Turing agreed to take hormone therapy for a year instead of going to prison."
If the money isn't raised, the papers could disappear into a private archive, never to be seen again."
OR they could be bought by a private collector who could just as easily "indefinitely loan" them to Bletchley Park. Just as many private art collectors have pieces on loan to museums.
but rather as a side effect of bigotry and/or indifference.
In other words, gross negligence.
They committed what we would call today a hate crime.
If you have a duty of care, commit gross negligence, and a person dies, you would be heading to jail with charges of manslaughter.
The governments' killing of the man, by causing his own suicide, is no different.
They knew or should have known, the ramifications of horome therapy, before forcing anyone into it.
Even when punishing criminals, the government has a duty to not cause them to die or to permanently cause them to want to die.
What difference does it make what happens to his "original" papers? They have been published and are accessible to all.
With Turing, of all people, one should understand that it is the information contained in those papers that matters--which is public--not the physical artifact.
The headline is, as usual, misleading. These aren't Turing's papers (which usually means personal papers and notes belonging to the person named), they're copies of [professional] papers he wrote.
These aren't the equivalent to a famous painter's works, they are equivalent to the first run of prints that a publisher made from a painter's work. They are not the papers written by Turing, they are the first run from the printing press after the publisher took them and typeset them.
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What must be more sad (if it's a question of volume) is that uncounted numbers of people like Turing were then, before, and are treated this way today, but there is no sympathy or support or help for them because they are just people and not geniuses. We don't know who most of them are because, like Turing, they hide the truth from most people in their lives.
They may not be subject to hormone therapy (though some were) but are ostracized, ridiculed, excluded, persecuted, killed. Even here on Slashdot surrounded by supposedly smart people.
We can do better.
Just donate to Bletchley if you're interested, they're the experts at handling this kind of material and making it available for the public, better to let them do it and give them your money.