Turing
by Andrew Hodges
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From WW2 code-breaker to Artificial Intelligence - a fascinating account of the remarkable Alan Turing. Alan Turing's 1936 paper On Computable Numbers was a landmark of twentieth-century thought. It not only provided the principle of the post-war computer, but also gave an entirely new approach to the philosophy of the mind. Influenced by his crucial codebreaking work during the war, and by practical pioneering of the first electronic computers, Turing argued that all the operations of the show more mind could be performed by computers. His thesis is the cornerstone of modern Artificial Intelligence. Andrew Hodges gives a fresh analysis of Turing's work, relating it to his extraordinary life. show lessTags
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Capsule biography by _the_ Turing biographer for a series titled "The Great Philosophers Series". It's well written, but so necessarily terse that it conveys a feeling more than understanding. Turing emerges from most biographies as such a likable figure, I don't know why. It is surely better than most other capsule biographies of Turing, which would attempt breeziness, pathetically. It quotes extensively from Turing's original work, which is hard to read w/out or even perhaps with the context of his other original writings. And finally it discusses the relationship of Roger Penrose's ideas about mind to Turing, about which I really know only what I was able to glean from reading about Neal Stephenson's "Anathem".
It's a quick review on how Turing came up with his famous theorem and Turing's personality.
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Andrew Hodges was born in London, England in 1949. He is a mathematician, author, and activist in the gay liberation movement of the 1970s. Since the early 1970s, he has worked on twistor theory. He is also known as the author of Alan Turing: The Enigma, the story of the British computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing. This book was the basis show more for the 2014 feature film The Imitation Game. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Turing
- Original publication date
- 1999
- People/Characters
- Alan Turing
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- Members
- 101
- Popularity
- 321,028
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.60)
- Languages
- English, Finnish, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 1
