gay rights and how anti-gay types wreck civilization

[mckitterick]

In this essay, Mike Selinker strikes a sad note in England's history, when they killed national hero and genius Alan Turing, thereby relegating themselves to the dustbin of history. It's a must-read.

One can see this tragedy as an opportunity for an alternate-history story. Has anyone written this: What if England hadn't forced Alan Turing into an intolerable situation? What if he had gone on to establish a British computer industry in the 1950s? What if computer science had flourished twenty years sooner than it did?

Questions that elicit answers that make Turing's death even more tragic.

Chris

Comments

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I suspect he might have gone further in working models but be stymied by the economic context of his work (ie a British university*).

There's a very good tv film Breaking the Code, based on Hugh Whitmore's play, in which Derek Jacobi plays Turing. As I recall, the way it presents things, Turing could have lied a bit more and the police would have overlooked his sexuality - instead he admitted to everything.

Certainly not one of Britain's finer moments.


* The story is told** of George Gray's development of LCD technology at the University of Hull in the 1960s after decades of work at the chemistry department, with no patent filed on the grounds no one could see a practical purpose for these.

** The story is told - but I suspect parts of it are local urban myth, such as the whale buried under the social sciences building and what precisely a future children's presenter did with the soccer and/or American Football team on/under the pool table.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip; I'd like to check out that show some time.

The LCD story is a bit depressing.