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1. Keys to Turing

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Virtual Memory
This chapter is in the book Virtual Memory
CHAPTER­1Keys to TuringPEEB MYMJ NXLL BHHE LPLY CGAM XMYG HROW COPH PNCM VCHY ZKJF GZXQ FVTP QIXB WBBK IWUM QARW SZQV LJCA PBOY SXNQ TGIQ FPOA PZHO IIFZ IELM ZJYQ XQYB WZMN MXIN UAST EGDM MINE HCRC EIBA OJPB KU.—PKTG GYOEYKII WHOBHBOnce upon a time computers were human. By and large they were women who worked in institutional laboratories.1 Their labor involved performing simple mathematical calculations, delegated to them in order to free up the men for more complex thinking. Many such human computers were employed at code-breaking facilities during World War II. One of these was Bletchley Park in England, where, alongside their male colleagues, the female computers helped to crack some of the most notorious ciphers in history. This chapter does not directly con-cern these women, but it does tell a story—part Pinocchio, part Snow White—about a mathematical wizard named Alan Turing who tried to make the computer human again, and it attempts to show how his com-putational research was shaped at many key moments by fantasy, by a queer sensibility, and by a form of intelligence that has sometimes been labeled “feminine.”One of Turing’s final projects was a computer-based, automated love-letter generator, which some have identified as the first known work of new media art.2 It was programmed by Christopher Strachey in 1952 for the Manchester Mark I computer. As a professor at the University of
© 2020 Duke University Press, Durham, USA

CHAPTER­1Keys to TuringPEEB MYMJ NXLL BHHE LPLY CGAM XMYG HROW COPH PNCM VCHY ZKJF GZXQ FVTP QIXB WBBK IWUM QARW SZQV LJCA PBOY SXNQ TGIQ FPOA PZHO IIFZ IELM ZJYQ XQYB WZMN MXIN UAST EGDM MINE HCRC EIBA OJPB KU.—PKTG GYOEYKII WHOBHBOnce upon a time computers were human. By and large they were women who worked in institutional laboratories.1 Their labor involved performing simple mathematical calculations, delegated to them in order to free up the men for more complex thinking. Many such human computers were employed at code-breaking facilities during World War II. One of these was Bletchley Park in England, where, alongside their male colleagues, the female computers helped to crack some of the most notorious ciphers in history. This chapter does not directly con-cern these women, but it does tell a story—part Pinocchio, part Snow White—about a mathematical wizard named Alan Turing who tried to make the computer human again, and it attempts to show how his com-putational research was shaped at many key moments by fantasy, by a queer sensibility, and by a form of intelligence that has sometimes been labeled “feminine.”One of Turing’s final projects was a computer-based, automated love-letter generator, which some have identified as the first known work of new media art.2 It was programmed by Christopher Strachey in 1952 for the Manchester Mark I computer. As a professor at the University of
© 2020 Duke University Press, Durham, USA

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. 1. Keys to Turing 18
  6. 2. Christian Marclay’s Two Clocks 47
  7. 3. Matter, Time, and the Digital: Agnès Varda’s Videos 71
  8. 4. Beyond Repetition: Victor Burgin’s Loops 100
  9. 5. The Powers of the Virtual 125
  10. 6. Another World Is Virtual 161
  11. Notes 179
  12. Bibliography 191
  13. Index 199
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375159-003

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. 1. Keys to Turing 18
  6. 2. Christian Marclay’s Two Clocks 47
  7. 3. Matter, Time, and the Digital: Agnès Varda’s Videos 71
  8. 4. Beyond Repetition: Victor Burgin’s Loops 100
  9. 5. The Powers of the Virtual 125
  10. 6. Another World Is Virtual 161
  11. Notes 179
  12. Bibliography 191
  13. Index 199
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