A walk in a Manchester Park on a Sunday morning …
Tucked away between Manchester Piccadilly and Oxford Road train stations is a quiet – but very touching – memorial to Alan Turing. In Sackville Park (or Sackville Gardens, depending on which map you consult), a figure sits, holding an apple, on a bench. Both are cast in bronze. The relief reads, ‘Alan Mathison Turing 1912-1954′ along with an ENIGMA-style coding of, ‘Founder of Computer Science’. At the figure’s feet, a further inscription reads, ‘Father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker, victim of prejudice … Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture’, the second part being a quotation from Bertrand Russell.
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2 Comments | tags: Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell, Enigma, Manchester | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Philosophy, Politics
Now available as eBook and paperback
What makes something sentient? What does it take for an entity to be aware of its own existence and to want to interact with the world of its own accord? Is it a gift from God or hard science? Is it something fundamentally human or animal in nature or is it a simple technological principle based on brain size? There are many models, of course. But, if consciousness is simply a natural product of neural complexity then eventually, in theory, we might build something – a computer or a machine – that was actually big enough to wake up!
Oh, wait …!
The widespread ramblings, which have appeared on this blog over the years, now make a partial contribution to a novel. (See http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/vicgrout)
Vic Grout’s Conscious is set a year or three into the future. The ‘Internet of Everything’ is making the world a more connected place than ever before. People’s lives are becoming increasingly automated. But something odd is happening … ‘Things’ are beginning to misbehave and no-one can work out why. What starts as an amusing inconvenience quickly becomes very serious indeed!
A ragged bunch of academics, scientists and philosophers are on the case – and may know the answer. But now they have to convince people that their crazy explanation is true. And that’s only the start. Against a backdrop of a world suddenly beginning to fall apart, they’re in a race against time to get someone to do anything about it. And not everyone is on their side!
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Leave a comment | tags: Artificial intelligence, Big Connectivity, Big Data, Brain, Formal proof, Futurology, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, IoT, Machine intelligence, Real Internet of Things, Science fiction, Singularity, Technological singularity | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Computing, Education, Engineering, General, Hardware, Industry, Mathematics, Philosophy, Politics, Programming, Science, Software
What makes something sentient? What does it take for an entity to be aware of its own existence and to want to interact with the world of its own accord? Is it a gift from God or hard science? Is it something fundamentally human or animal in nature or is it a simple technological principle based on brain size? There are many models, of course. But, if consciousness is simply a natural product of neural complexity then eventually, in theory, we might build something – a computer or a machine – that was actually big enough to wake up!
Oh, wait …!
The widespread ramblings, which have appeared on this blog over the years, now make a partial contribution to a novel: http://tinyurl.com/VicGroutConscious
Vic Grout’s Conscious is set a year or three into the future. The ‘Internet of Everything’ is making the world a more connected place than ever before. People’s lives are becoming increasingly automated. But something odd is happening … ‘Things’ are beginning to misbehave and no-one can work out why. What starts as an amusing inconvenience quickly becomes very serious indeed!
A ragged bunch of academics, scientists and philosophers are on the case – and may know the answer. But now they have to convince people that their crazy explanation is true. And that’s only the start. Against a backdrop of a world suddenly beginning to fall apart, they’re in a race against time to get someone to do anything about it. And not everyone is on their side!
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Leave a comment | tags: AI, Artificial intelligence, Big Connectivity, Big Data, Brain, Consciousness, Emerging technologies, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, Real Internet of Things, Science fiction, Sentience, Technological singularity | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Computing, Education, Engineering, General, Hardware, Industry, Mathematics, Philosophy, Politics, Programming, Science, Software
Both local interest and time-critical, this one …
Historic court files revealing the details of World War Two enigma codebreaker Alan Turing’s convictions for homosexual behaviour are to go on public display for the very first time.
http://chesterpride.co.uk/turing-display/
The story of Alan Turing’s vital contribution to the Allied campaign during World War Two was brought to life in the film, Oscar-winning The Imitation Game. And now, the record of what followed in Cheshire’s courts is available for public viewing.
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Leave a comment | tags: Alan Turing, Legal, Prosecution | posted in Politics
Turing's Radiator 