My Sketchup of a Turing Machine



Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, created the Turing Machine in 1936. The Turing Machine was more of a concept than an actual machine. All computers run on algorithms, and Alan Turing created the idea for how a "computer" (envisioned at the time as an actual person!) could follow an algorithm.





Algorithms are not solidly defined, but in my unprofessional summary, an algorithm is a set of rules and steps that one follows to solve a problem. All problems executed by computers, at the most basic level, are mathematical problems, and computers solve these many simple problems very, very quickly. After reading about the Turing Machine online, I admit that I do not quite understand how it solves mathematical problems, but what I do get is that it systematically moves information around by changing the colors of the cells (The colors of the cells are now represented in computers as ones and zeros). Depending on the colors of various cells, the computer moves between cells until it reaches the end of the algorithm, and the final state of the computer is output as the answer. Whew! That was intense!





So much of what we interact with--this blog,the music in our cars, the video games we play, our healthcare--is made possible by computers, so we all owe a huge debt to Dr. Turing. Dr. Turing also helped the Allies win the war by helping decode Nazi messages during World War II. But what do computers and code-breaking have to do with this blog and being queer?



Alan Turing was a victim of institutionalized homophobia. Back when he was alive, homosexual sex was illegal in Great Britain. 1952, he was persecuted for "gross indecency." He was forced to either receive chemical castration or jail time. Dr. Turing chose Chemical Castration, and this was very hard on him. In addition to taking regular injections of Estrogen, Dr. Turing was banned from the national cryptography lab where he worked. In 1954, Alan Turing died of Cyanide poisoning from eating a poisoned apple. It was probably suicide, and that makes me sad. Even though this man contributed greatly to society, he was rejected and mistreated simply for his sexuality.





Fortunately, the world is better today, but we still do not have enough queer people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. There are several studies detailing the challenges of queer people in the STEM fields, and I will review these over this week and write about them next week. In the meantime, I encourage queer people in STEM fields to persevere. You may feel like an outsider at times, and maybe even openly stigmatized, but keep the knowledge in your heart that people like Dr. Turing have come before you, and you are not alone.









Credit goes to Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia for my informal education of the Turing Machine.