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Lost Turing Letters Give Unique Insight Into His Academic Life Prior To Death (manchester.ac.uk)
bellwould shares a report from The University of Manchester. From the report: A lost and unique collection of letters and correspondence from the late Alan Turing has been found in an old filing cabinet in a storeroom at the University of Manchester. The file's content, which potentially hasn't seen the light of day for at least 30 years, dates from early 1949 until Turing's death in June 1954. Altogether there are 148 documents, including a letter from GCHQ, a handwritten draft BBC radio program about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and offers to lecture from some of America's most famous universities, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
... [T]he letters do give a unique glimpse into his every day working life at the time of these events. Plus, some documents also give a brief insight into some of his more forthright personal opinions. For example, his response to a conference invitation to the U.S. in April 1953 is simply, "I would not like the journey, and I detest America." The collection of papers has been sorted, catalogued and stored at the University's Library by Archivist, James Peters. The documents themselves were found by Professor Jim Miles of the School of Computer Science.
... [T]he letters do give a unique glimpse into his every day working life at the time of these events. Plus, some documents also give a brief insight into some of his more forthright personal opinions. For example, his response to a conference invitation to the U.S. in April 1953 is simply, "I would not like the journey, and I detest America." The collection of papers has been sorted, catalogued and stored at the University's Library by Archivist, James Peters. The documents themselves were found by Professor Jim Miles of the School of Computer Science.
Aren't they Found Turing Letters?
Imagine what could have been, he was the Rockstar of GC&CS until they wanted to 'fix' him. For those who are buffs of CS history, it's always a bit sad to be reminded of our science's founder, and how tragically we lost him.
I don't read AC
It does not seem to be well-known that Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954) spent two academic years at Princeton University, from the summer of 1936 to the summer of 1938.
Alan Turing returned to the U.S. during WWII as a liaison between the two communities of cryptanalysts for about four months, from November 1942 to March 1943. He arrived in New York City on November 12, 1942, before heading to the headquarters of the U.S. Secret Service (now the CIA) in Washington, D.C.
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My experience with smart people is that they hate travel, and with stupid people is that they like travel.
My experience with people who make statements like this is that they have a very narrow (and often self-serving) definition of smart.
He should have gone to San Francisco.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
2 hour travel to a London airport.
3 hour wait time in security, the lounge, check-in queues, etc. at a London airport.
God-knows-how-long a flight, in cramped conditions, unable to escape.
1 hour wait time to pass security the other end.
2 hour travel to your hotel.
All the same again a few days later.
Sorry, but it's got nothing to do with autism or anything else - what a horrible way to go, just to give a talk. Sod that. I wouldn't do that to start a week's holiday in Europe.
I think you miss the point that "travel" doesn't just mean "wander around a country" but the hassle of getting there in the first place, which can consume a vast portion of your free time. If you're not going to get a holiday, are going to working / giving a talk while you're there, you'd have to pay me a LOT of money to suffer that, especially so in Turing's day.
The "experience" of travel - as in "holidaying" - is entirely different to travelling for business / academia.
YOUR opinion is biased in favour of your limited, bigoted, mis-targeted, attacking view without an understanding of what's being discussed.
Turing lived in America for a while. He detested it. And he also hated the journey.
P.S. Yes, even travel for a "holiday", sorry, but I've been many, many, many places for everything from tent-camping to five-star cruise ships (e.g. the QE2). Most "travel" sucks. Especially if you are only able to go see the same tourist attractions as everyone else. There are moments, but just because you have a funny incident in Mumbai once doesn't mean that it's a life-changing and necessary experience.
Just having been to a country that someone else hasn't doesn't make you a world expert on it. Nor does it mean you're going to "discover yourself" and "learn about new cultures" or any of the other cliches that people trot out.
Travel-and-live-there, yes, possibly. Anything else is just holidaying.
That's not harsh. This might be harsh (but I don't think so):
"His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: 'No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.' (In the Bell Labs cafeteria, New York, 1943)".
- Alan Hodges ("Alan Turing: the Enigma of Intelligence")
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
No. Because they stay at home, and you never met them. Thus while people tend to be idiots everywhere (even travelers), you incorrectly assume that the people staying at home are somewhat more smart. This is survivorship bias. You don't have any sufficient data to make conclusions about people staying at home.
By that time the UK and US had everything they needed. Turing was been replaced by a new generation of smarter, trusted people who had used all the new methods and tools.
The future was getting ready for TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
The race was on to find and keep German and Italian cryptanalysts with the needed Russian skills at the end of ww2.
Germany had codebooks on Turkey, Romania, Bolivia and Ecuador. Some material from Switzerland, France and the Vatican. German and Italy also had some British and American code traffic.
Enigma was the past even with later German improvements during ww2. Spying on the Soviet Union, France, the rest of the world was the new tasking. Collect it all.
Some security issues had to be allowed for at the very start of ww2, they would not be allowed after ww2.
A lot of staff hired could not be trusted near the end of ww2 and after 1945.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I suggest that while *travel* may not broaden the mind, living in another country certainly does.
I lived in Belgium and Australia as a child and find America to be culturally insular. There's a whole world out there, folks, with music and books and art...shame we don't see as much of it as we could.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain
Silence is a state of mime.
If it was email (apple/gmail/yahoo) these would be lost forever unless someone had his password and cellphone for two factor authentication.
Keep in mind he wrote that about the time his chemical castration procedure was completed. That was an act by the government of robbing a person of libido and the source of joy in life. And he surely thought of it as terribly unjust since in his mind he had done no harm to anyone. It had to be hard to be excited about travel or America in such a state, or life in general since as you know he killed himself a year later.