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Alan Turing's Body
There's no command-Z for this great man's suffering.“Code is law,” Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig observed before the turn of the century. Code is law and code is pretend and since it’s pretend we can take code back, we can command-Z or delete the instruction and write something better.
We can’t do the same for Turing’s pain. The instructions by which Turing suffered, executed by a body politic which he served, inflicted themselves on his human body and altered it. We can append to history but never emend it; we can’t take back Turing’s misery.
But there’s an upside to these pretending machines. In the strict domains of law and code, there is nothing but emulation. Pretend and pretend to something, and very soon you might ask what, exactly, you are pretending to be.
We can’t change Turing’s experience with a pardon. But his legacy mandates that we emulate, create, and codify humane and humble bodies politic, whether with law or with software, to steward and respect bodies natural.
According to Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson, 75,000 men were convicted under the same law as Turing, some 26,000 of whom are still alive. (The law was repealed in 1967.) We might start by pardoning, or apologizing to, all those other men.
We can’t do the same for Turing’s pain. The instructions by which Turing suffered, executed by a body politic which he served, inflicted themselves on his human body and altered it. We can append to history but never emend it; we can’t take back Turing’s misery.
But there’s an upside to these pretending machines. In the strict domains of law and code, there is nothing but emulation. Pretend and pretend to something, and very soon you might ask what, exactly, you are pretending to be.
We can’t change Turing’s experience with a pardon. But his legacy mandates that we emulate, create, and codify humane and humble bodies politic, whether with law or with software, to steward and respect bodies natural.
According to Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson, 75,000 men were convicted under the same law as Turing, some 26,000 of whom are still alive. (The law was repealed in 1967.) We might start by pardoning, or apologizing to, all those other men.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/alan-turings-body/282641/
via xchrom
5 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
and the only other solution would've been to back date the subsequent change in the law such that an offense didn't occur - never been done.
The significance of the use of the Royal Perjorative in this instance may be measured by it being only one of four since WW2 - Bentley, Evans, one whose name escapes me and now Turing.
I'm pleased Turing has finally been pardoned.
btw - it was the last para I referred to.
that was news to me and some interesting almost wooish theory.
I was discussing with a friend how unfair historical precedents were in shaping our modern world...and she replied "In history there are no going back-sies".
We can't undo, whats been done. We can only stop doing it again.
Happy Boxing Day! 
