[SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon

Thu Jun 5 08:20:39 PDT 2014

My question was: if Turing lived to the modern era, what would he have thought about decrypting Angela Merkel's phone conversations? What do we think of modern-day disciples of Turing who do this? The late Thomas Hughes spoke of "technological momentum": that an organization learns to do things a certain way, and they continue to do that. GCHQ had this tradition of intercepting German telecommunications that endured through many changes of government, boundaries, hot and cold wars, peace, etc. It even goes back to the Zimmermann telegram of 1917.
http://hnn.us/article/155699

I know that this is not on the topic of Turing's sexual orientation, but to me this is an equally-significant topic that we ought to be examining.

Paul Ceruzzi

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Paul N. Edwards
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2014 10:01 AM
To: sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon

I expect "openly gay," with all the implications that phrase carries today, is an anachronistic label -- not an accurate description of Turing's public persona, nor truly of his private one either.

Paul

On Jun 5, 2014, at 0:36 , Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org<mailto:thaigh at computer.org>> wrote:

My initial guess was that this was an anachronism. Hodge's book Alan Turing:
The Enigma appeared in hardcover late 1983, and one might expect it to have
taken a while to spread far into popular awareness or to have its rather
complex narrative reduced to "won World War II." The Turing play "Breaking
the Code" was not written until 1986. That did a huge amount to boost
Turing's public profile, at least in the UK.

However, the Amazon "search inside the book" finds a line of this kind in a
recent reissue of The Normal Heart script and a 2000 volume combining it
with the sequel. It is of course possible that the play was revised from its
original 1985 version, which is not searchable online.

So apparently Kramer was a pioneer in taking the complex portrait of Turing
given in the Hodges biography, which I believe was widely reviewed on its
initial release, and turning it into the slogan that "it was an openly gay
Englishman who was as responsible as any man for winning he Second World
War." Kramer continues, "His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the
Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going
to do--and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for
being gay."

That would be an important passage in a history of Turing in popular memory,
which would be a great dissertation topic for someone.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org> [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Janet Abbate
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 4:42 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon

Did anyone catch the shout-out to Alan Turing in the HBO AIDS-themed movie
"The Normal Heart"? The main character rants, "A gay man won World War II!
They should teach that in schools."

I wonder if that was actually the image of Turing in 1985 (when the original
play was written) or something they added later for the movie? (I mean that
he won WWII, not that he was gay.)

Dr. Janet Abbate
Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society Co-director, National
Capital Region STS program Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr<http://www.sts.vt.edu/ncr>
www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055<http://www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055>
www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS<http://www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS>

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Paul N. Edwards
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