Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Alan M. Turing

This is one of those posts that can be considered a diversion (earlier example) from our normal purpose. However, it does deal with an important theme and does relate to the context of the blog.

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Alan M. Turing was born 100 years ago in London. His work in computation was highly influential. The ACM gives an award yearly in his name that is the "Nobel" for computer scientists. In fact, this year, they're gathering thirty-three of the recipients at a meeting in San Francisco.

As an aside, let me note that computation will be important to genealogy in many ways. I have already made one comment about reluctance to adopt new technology (On blogs and other modern means). We could think of many ways that computation will be essential. Here is a very short list (for starters): immersion into gaming environments that unfold events with real characters -- not just those covered by history, extensions of augmented reality schemes to include facts from historic genealogy (verified by NEHGS, et al), ...

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As I was re-acquainting myself with Alan's work, I noticed that he went to the Sherborne School in Dorset. Remember that some on Nantucket say that Thomas' family came from that region. The school was established in 1550.

Running across that little tidbit reminds me that we need to learn more about this area, as we try to run down information about Thomas and Margaret from before their 1624 arrival at Cape Ann.


Remarks:

05/01/2012 -- We'll need to talk singularity in the context of Alan. The computer has as many holes as do we; however, we can cut out of the fog. Genealogy (historic, biologic, and more) will be a basis for looking at this concept and its importance. That is a forward look. Going backward, we'll find a way to adopt memes, as a necessity. We are, one might say, meme readers. Too, we express what they convey. That is supposed to suggest something that we need to understand: parallel to we being expressions of our genes. Now, within that framework, our look back at Thomas is apropos.

04/26/2012 -- Will need to do some Brit-based research, no doubt. For starters, we'll begin to look at work that is already done.

Modified: 05/01/2012

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