"WHAT A WAY TO TREAT A LIFE THAT WAS ALAN TURING" 12.03.2023
Secretly securing those liberal freedoms that we so unthinkingly express today. Shortening the Second World War by perhaps, two years. Reducing the weight of material and human loses and the damage from hostilities, made less costly to our survival; in a Europe so exhausted by effort, with a resolve to end war in the silence of the suffering. Instead, there onfolded the platitutes of peace, that have led us to Ukraine and the terrifying aftershocks of complacency. Weaponry, one step away from nuclear, with an obscene disregard for human life, leaving the United Nations unprepared for an endgame, so hugely disproportional to Alan's immeasurable achievements. Interventions, readily charged by seemingly impossible deadlines, to be matched against his grindingly stoic intelligence. Urging disciplines of mind to confront the calulations, applied beyond belief for our benefit and finally to be recognized by the then, from their distance and unknowing. A signature of royal pardon with his face on a banknote note. And they thought that was enough. Well, it's not enough.

Nowehere near enough, to remember in perpetuity his world of academic brilliance and all that came alive to rescue a nation on it's knees, in facing certain defeat and his changing influence on countless generations brought up in ignorance of his name. Those born to use the outcome of such immense ability from the very earliest of their everyday, with no notion of its origins. Those gathering forces of younger lives, destined to be excluded in their depth of understanding and so denied the opportunity to revere his name and lasting memory. Growing aspirations, so essential in pursuit of progressive intelligence, with their living and learning through digital solution, as continuity of birthright, but without the acknowledgement of contructs that lend value to lives from analysis through to trivia, using the retrievable convenience of a mobile phone. Too easily taken for granted, for what were the beginnings of artificial intelligence and modern cognitive science. Commonplace activities, conducted with an ease of transmission that he made possible, but how many younger lives would know his name? Recall with national pride all that Alan had given them in ending a life to legislative condemnations of social indifference. Institutions, endorsing a gross miscarriage of justice, alongside the charge of gross indecency.

June 6th 1944 was D Day. June 7th 1954 was to be Alan's last day but far from the beaches of Normandy that he made possible. His burden of blame for what he had been born to express, finally linked to that erasure of unnecessary contempt. A discrimination, excused by pardon, whilst rejecting his meaning of numbers and their place in the transformation of words, images and understanding. That cruelty in ending his life and denial of his future. Futures that would be Horizon membership as part of European Union scientific research, now politically forced into jeopardy. How like the then, briefly distracted by the Festival of Britain in 1951, in celebration of British design, manufacturing and technical advancement throughout the earliest of energies in space exploration and the associated enterprise, for a nation to be seen at the cutting edge of post-war progress. National enterprise impossible without the achievements of Alan Turing, in breaking the Enigma Code, so crucially strategic in revealing operational movements of the enemy and orders sent by German Naval Command, to the vast majority of its warships, submarines and support vessels. Knowledge that still might claim where information technology had its roots and our younger people equally denied their Horizon future, in advancing lives of ultra-sensitive computer economics, designed and aligned to cognition, that avoids the risk of the then and their human interference. Copyright Bennett cla 2023 research@cla-associates.co.uk

Also see LinkedIn Profile