{"id":1386,"date":"2012-05-09T07:46:22","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T23:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2012-06-23T18:00:38","modified_gmt":"2012-06-23T10:00:38","slug":"alan-turing-uks-gay-dad-of-computing-100th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/2012\/05\/09\/alan-turing-uks-gay-dad-of-computing-100th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Turing (UK’s Gay Dad of Computing) 100th birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alan<\/a>

Alan Turing<\/p><\/div>\n

I wouldn’t have the career I love without Alan Turing<\/a>; you wouldn’t have the Internet, and perhaps we wouldn’t now enjoy a comparatively free Europe<\/a>. The UK chemically castrated Turing because he was gay. We drove him to commit suicide*<\/a>. Gordon Brown said “sorry!”<\/a> There was a (possibly poorly advised) petition to have him posthumously pardoned<\/a>, and of tens of millions of Internet-and-computing-gadget enjoying Britons, only 23 thousand of us signed.<\/p>\n

Alan Turing (had we not driven him to death) may have lived to have received a telegram from the Queen<\/a> this year. It’s the Queen’s 60th Anniversary and nearly 60 years since Alan Turing died “on her watch”. Alan Turing’s treatment – the same treatment dished out to many of his contemporaries whose lives were no different to those of many decent people today – was barbaric. We owe him so much more than “sorry”.<\/p>\n

I’d like to read next month that he was sent his anniversary message. He lives on through his contributions to us all and deserves a very happy 100th birthday.<\/p>\n

*<\/a> Jack Copeland says – quite reasonably – that the coroner’s suicide verdict is not strongly supported by evidence<\/a> and that Turing’s death may have been simply an accident. That wouldn’t absolve the UK of our barbaric treatment of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wouldn’t have the career I love without Alan Turing; you wouldn’t have the Internet, and perhaps we wouldn’t now enjoy a comparatively free Europe. The UK chemically castrated Turing because he was gay. We drove him to commit suicide*. Gordon Brown said “sorry!” There was a (possibly poorly advised) petition to have him posthumously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broken","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}