Recently on Facebook, I’ve seen this going around:
You are posting on a social network created by an Atheist (Mark Zuckerberg), using an OS created by a Buddhist (Steve Jobs) or an Agnostic (Bill Gates) or maybe an athiest (Linus Torvalds), that is executed through hardware based on the work of an Atheist homosexual (Alan Turing) that works thanks to the electric networks developed by a free thinker (Thomas Edison).
I’m not going to preach or say anything about people’s views or religions (those without preach/proselytize just as much as those with), but I thought it was interesting to think about. In addition I thought it was pertinent as the next two books I plan to read Alan Turing, whose 100th birthday is this year. I plan on reading The Man Who Knew Too Much by David Leavitt, a library book, and The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by by Sinclair McKay, a Net Galley.
I don’t know much about Turing other than he was prosecuted for being gay and took his own life at some point after being chemically castrated. There are still petitions to the UK Government for an official pardon and apology, but little has come from them. However, Alan Turing’s legacy in math, codebreaking, computing and artificial-intelligence lives on. Google recently based on the Turing Machine:
