[SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 48, Issue 3

Thu Jun 5 12:37:44 PDT 2014

>From Hodges and other sources, I would say that AT was open about being gay.  Texts from his co-workers (usually women) are quite clear many people knew he was gay… there’s a wonderful line in the movie Breaking the Code in which AT’s boss, Dilly Knox, asks Turing to tone down his relations with a particular young man at Blecthley.  Knox himself was gay: "Alan, such things [gay relations] are best kept as a dimly-remembered memory.”  One is struck, as with a hammer, at the emotional pain and resignation of being gay during this time… winked at among close friends, but career-ending at a higher level.

Dag
--
Dag Spicer
Senior Curator
Computer History Museum
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
1401 North Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View, CA 94043-1311

Tel: +1 650 810 1035
Fax: +1 650 810 1055

On Jun 5, 2014, at 11:47 AM, members-request at sigcis.org<mailto:members-request at sigcis.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: Alan Turing as gay icon (Ceruzzi, Paul)
  2. Re: Alan Turing as gay icon (geoghegb at cms.hu-berlin.de)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 15:20:39 +0000
From: "Ceruzzi, Paul" <CeruzziP at si.edu>
To: "'Paul N. Edwards'" <pne at umich.edu>, sigcis <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon
Message-ID:
<447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05392C13616B at SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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
Professor of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History<http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/>, University of Michigan
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming<http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/vastmachine/index.html> (MIT Press, 2010)

Terse replies are deliberate<http://five.sentenc.es/> (and better than nothing)
University of Michigan School of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/>
3439 North Quad
105 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
(734) 764-2617 (office)
(206) 337-1523  (fax)
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 20:45:24 +0200
From: geoghegb at cms.hu-berlin.de
To: "sigcis" <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon
Message-ID:
<a02ddc38a5ea96a42f91361cbc92607c.squirrel at webmail.cms.hu-berlin.de>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8

Hi Sigcis,

I concur with Paul. Turing's fear of being thought of as a gay man is
alluded to in the letter below, which I've copied and pasted from
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress-alan.html . It
suggests his fear that his  professional credibility would collapse if his
sexual identity became public knowledge. As an aside, I think I read
something in archival correspondences -- maybe among Norbert Wiener and
Warren McCulloch? -- suggesting that suspicions about Walter Pitts' sexual
orientation (among other issues) likewise threatened his employability. In
case I'm confabulating, don't quote me on that though...

Best,
Bernard

Turing wrote the following letter in 1952 to his friend and fellow
mathematician, Norman Routledge, shortly before pleading guilty.

(Source: Alan Turing: The Enigma - The Centenary Edition; Image: Alan
Turing, via.)

My dear Norman,

I don't think I really do know much about jobs, except the one I had
during the war, and that certainly did not involve any travelling. I think
they do take on conscripts. It certainly involved a good deal of hard
thinking, but whether you'd be interested I don't know. Philip Hall was in
the same racket and on the whole, I should say, he didn't care for it.
However I am not at present in a state in which I am able to concentrate
well, for reasons explained in the next paragraph.

I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered
to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about
10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual
offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is
a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story
one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge
from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out.

Glad you enjoyed broadcast. Jefferson certainly was rather disappointing
though. I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the
future.

Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think

Yours in distress,

Alan

Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
Institut f?r Kulturwissenschaft
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin
www.bernardg.com

On Jun 5, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Paul N. Edwards wrote:

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> 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] 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
www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055
www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS

_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of
SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/
and you can change your subscription options at
http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list
of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at
http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription
options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

___________________________

Paul N. Edwards
Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global
Warming (MIT Press, 2010)

Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)

University of Michigan School of Information
3439 North Quad
105 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
(734) 764-2617 (office)
(206) 337-1523  (fax)
pne.people.si.umich.edu

_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list
of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at
http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription
options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

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