Grady Koester
Mrs. Ragusky
Argumentative Essay
9 January 2023
The Great Alan Turing
“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human” Alan Turing wrote in 1950 talking about his famous Turing Test. His brother was in foster care, his father was in the British Civil Service stationed in India, and his mother was the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras railways. His life begane of to a bad start with not seeing his father very much because he was usually traveling abroad. Even with these setbacks he still managed to be one of the greatest inventors of al time. Alan Turing should be the next person featured on a stamp because of his contribution to WWII, the perseverance
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The first reason why Alan Turing deserves the honor of being on the stamp is because of what he did during WWII. Alan Turing was a major asset to the Allies during WWII. According to the International Churchill Society, Winston Churchill said that Alan Turing made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill (The British prime minister during WWII) stated that Turing was extremely helpful in the war by cracking the enigma code which ended the war by around 2 to 4 years saving an estimated 14 million lives of people all around the world. Alan Turing also played a key part in the British code cracking team, “Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. His work gave the Allies the edge they needed to win the war in Europe” (Jacobson 2). Alan Turing created a machine to …show more content…
One example of him pushing through the barrier is, “Turing was also openly gay and in the early 1950s was arrested and punished for his sexual orientation by the same government he served“ (GLSEN). Being gay was illegal in England during the 1950s and he was arrested and betrayed by the very people that he saved in WWII. This would not only affect him physically but mentally and the feeling of betrayal. Alan Turing was also forced against his will to do chemical castration, “On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century — sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing — died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration” (Cowell 3). Not only being forced to have chemical castration but feeling that you have been betrayed by your government who you helped could affect Turing's morale and make it harder to complete things. Another example of Alan Turing displaying perseverance is the Enigma machine when he was building the Turing Machine to crack the Enigma code he worked day and night for almost a year so the Allies could win the war. Alan Turing spent all of his time during the war trying to crack the Enigma machine. Doing that took lots of pure grit and toughness to stay mentally ready after months of constant
Carr describes the way our brains have changed as a consequence of using media. He later reports that when new or improved technology enters our lives, we begin to take on the qualities of those technologies, because it changes our “intellectual technologies”. He also uses the analogy of a clock, presenting the idea that we eat, work, sleep, and rise based on what time of day it is, instead of listening to our own senses. Carr then uses the claim from a 1936 British mathematician named Alan Turing that computing systems are subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies such as our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and our television. Likewise, he explains how the internet assumes what we are thinking and injects its context with hyperlinks, blinking ads, headlines, and other propaganda.
For those experiments he won awards. He also signed the Declaration
However, Carr did not inform the readers his credentials and professional expertise throughout the essay. His profession is established at the end of the essay on a small footnote, which also provided his other essays and books. In the beginning of his essay, he establishes himself as a trustworthy source by discussing catastrophic events and providing small amounts of history. He also used quotes from historical figures such as the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead to make readers assume that he researched for his topic, which he did (90). Carr also provided opposing viewpoints by giving the reader’s quotes from theorists who are pro-automation and facts that prove humans can be “unreliable and inefficient” when they are responsible for operating simple tasks (93).
The first programmable computer was made on December 8, 1943 by Alan Turner. This machine changed the course of the war. Before the war, Alan Turing had a vision of a Universal Machine , which could be pre-programmed. ¨His single purpose was a bomb machine¨ ( Smith paragraph 2 sentence 2-3).
Even when he felt any type of sickness, he worked. He said working made him live longer. In 1928, Edison was given the Congressional Gold Medal as a way of thanking him for making everyone’s life brighter and easier. This medal is one of the nation’s highest civilian medals (DeMauro 38-40).
Turing was a genius. His love for math and science helped him reach tremendous goals. Including creating the first computer, and helping win a war. Therefore, Alan Turing is the obvious choice to be put on the stamp; he helped triumph WW ll, battled through diversity, and changed the world.
Alan Turing has inspired people with his algorithms, computing machinery and artificial intelligence (How Alan Turing’s legacy is inspiring our work today). This evidence shows that people were inspired to make future technological advancements by using his codes and algorithms to find AI in computers. Alan Turing has inspired people to decipher encrypted messages because of his attempt to decode the Enigma cipher machine used by the German military (Alan Turing By Jacob Aron). This evidence shows that Alan Turing was able to help the war effort for the British by cracking the Enigma Cipher machine that encrypts messages and frequencies. Alan Turing has inspired people to be fearless to daunting problems just like he did to find out a way to crack open the Enigma machine (What Alan Turing means to us).
Nicholas Carr is “an American journalist and technology writer” who attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Over the past decade, Carr has examined and studied the different impacts that computers have on our life and the “social consequences” of this new technology (Carr 123). In “A Thing Like Me” by Nicholas Carr, the author claims that technology is overpowering and dominating our lives. Carr expands on this idea further by defining it as people using “tools that allow them to extend their abilities” (Carr 124). To help with his argument, Carr uses a historical narrative about the creation of computer software, named ELIZA.
Some of his contributions include, writing the first mystery story, creating detective fiction and becoming master of the short story. Edgar definitely deserves his place in history, because what would we do without mystery? Although Poe wrote and did amazing things others can think otherwise like how he married his young cousin, had an alcoholic and drug problem, and how he always wrote about death like he was obsessed with it. The first thing people would think otherwise about Poe is his marriage with his thirteen year old cousin, when he was only twenty seven
The author begins this essay very extensive. He then begins to reduce it down by using specific reasons. To prove his argument, Carr uses various of different reasons, and experts. For example: Computers, typewriters, and the human brain. Carr’s tone is very morphart.
Turing himself unknown to him, created a great race to make a better and more complex artificial intelligence with this paper. The article since 1950 has been cited over 10,000 times. The way this article revolutionized has not been matched by any other paper in the computing world. Turing himself wore many hats in his life. He was mathematician, code breaker and computer scientist.
He has contributed to Microsoft and made many changes in which he was able to transform the computing industry. Moreover, he has dependably had more technical competence than interpersonal
The Turing test has become the most widely accepted test of artificial intelligence and the most influential. There are also considerable arguments that the Turing test is not enough to confirm intelligence. Legg and Hutter (2007) cite Block (1981) and Searle (1980) as arguing that a machine may appear intelligent by using a very large set of
Turing proved himself to be a valuable genius and his contributions to designing the Bombe were significant during World War II, but he encountered disgrace when authorities revealed he was homosexual. Two years after he was convicted of “gross indecency”, he committed suicide by ingesting a lethal
Pranav Patil Computer Science STATEMENT OF PURPOSE INTRO I believe that the ability to invent, innovate and discover is what has propelled man to the echelons of success. Throughout my life, I have been driven by the desire to “create”, a capability that transcends the passive acquisition of knowledge. It is always the unknown path that has enthralled me more than known terrain. In a world where everything from fighter jets to elevators, interactive graphic displays to digital watches, is driven by computers, I found it difficult not to get fascinated by the technology involved.