[SIGCIS-Members] Alan Turing as gay icon

Thu Jun 5 10:54:09 PDT 2014

This is a thought-provoking thread, in both of its directions: changing
perceptions of Turing as individual (sexuality, wartime significance, the
resurgence of popular awareness of him in recent years) and contested
meanings of his legacy as a figure in modem information history (a
phenomenon inextricably tied to surveillance).

I'd add to Paul C.'s mention of Hughes' thought; when it comes to
information technology in organizations, especially those in the public
sector, you also have to consider the ways "technological momentum" and
frequently ill-defined policy agendas reinforce one another in a feedback
loop. Government agencies accumulate and process information not just
because it's what they've always done, but because doing so frequently
seems to fulfill the nebulous policy directives of agency higher-ups,
elected officials, and even the populace at large.

You have a mandate to "get the Terrorists/Communists/Anarchists" and no one
closely questions how you do it in time of panic or popular outrage, when
outcome matters more than process. By the time anyone asks questions, the
expanded prerogative practices have embedded themselves and it takes
considerable effort to root them out. It doesn't even require national
security conditions -- you get a call for increased efficiency in
government operations (say from a President desperate to squeeze spending
margins, like in the late '60s, or an insurgent Congress, in the mid '90s)
and you get vague policy goals merging with entrenched information
technologies.

Anyways, all of these topics are compelling and I'm glad to see the list
discussing them.

Off on a tangent,
Andrew

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 11:20 AM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu> wrote:

>  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> 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
> <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
>
>
>
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> ___________________________
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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
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