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We watched The Imitation Game tonight, about the work, life and death of Alan Turing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing. It’s a painful story to watch given the ultimate fate of the man who you could argue won us the war and invented the computer (you’d be simplifying things a little with that argument, but wouldn’t be far off).Ultimately he was chemically castrated and probably committed suicide after being convicted of gross indecency, due to his homosexuality.
Ah, the good old days of the 1950s that so many of us want to turn the clock back to. Hooray!
I mean even if someone hadn’t basically won us World War II, chemical castration would have been a harsh punishment for having sex with a consenting person. But given that Turing did win us World War II…. His part in the war, of course, remained secret for a very long time. The unfairness of it all and the fact that life does not reward those who do good all go towards making it a very depressing story. But the triumph of nerdiness over evil is at least something to cheer about.
Turing reminded me a bit of my dad, who also had to keep his homosexuality a secret (though in his case, even from himself)… no, in that my dad also worked with these early computers, presumably benefitting directly from the work that Turing had done a decade or so before.
It’s a good film, even if the story is conflated and changed somewhat. But it was gripping and interesting and true enough. Worth a look if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s got Sherlock in it.
It made me determined to visit Bletchley and also not persecute geniuses for their sexuality. And as it'd hard to spot geniuses sometimes I suppose that means I am going to have to stop persecuting anyone for their sexuality. Which is annoying to me. As I hate those bloody straights.
Yes, that's right. I am prejudiced against straight people. Surprised you right?
