Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

The Allies were losing the war. England was starving. Vital food shipments from the U.S. were being sent to the bottom of the Atlantic by German U-boats. Men, women, and children scurried underground as sirens blared, mere moments before the Luftwaffe rained down terror from the skies. Country after country in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa fell before the advancing panzer blitzkrieg. Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and the physically disabled were being rounded up, and shipped in cattle cars to the horrors of the concentration camps.

Orders and messages from the German high command were relayed through the Enigma, a machine whose encrypted codes could not be broken. A daring operation succeeded in England getting their hands on one of the machines. Now all they had to do was crack the encryption.

In stepped Alan Mathison Turing (the 'Math' in Mathison foreshadowing his destiny at birth), born 23 June 1912. Turing was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and a Cambridge and Princeton University scholar. He quickly came to understand that only another machine, faster, nimbler, more powerful could defeat the Enigma. He conceived of and built the first digital computer, a huge conglomeration of rotating cylinders and wires.

I am bisexual. Anyone who knows me, or has read any of my writing, knows this. Had I not been born this way, I would still be outraged and heartbroken over what happened to Alan Turing.

We finally got around to watching The Imitation Game last evening. I took note of the film when it was released late last year, but it was not a movie I wanted to see in the theater. Due to my limited mobility, I usually reserve my theater-going to big budget, special effects laden, pyrotechnic, action adventures, preferably in 3D.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who I enjoy in all his roles - Sherlock Holmes, Khan, Smaug - portrayed Turing, the father of the computer. The plot centers around Turing's work in England during WWII where he headed a small unit of men - and one woman - tasked with breaking Germany's coded messages. The key was breaking the "Enigma" machine which encrypted the code.

Cryptologists (code-breakers, not tomb raiders) of the day, approached the problem through traditional, human based analysis using mathematical algorithms. However, the Enigma possessed a possible 159-million-million (!) possible combination keys, which the Germans changed every twenty-four hours.

It is estimated that the successful cracking of the Enigma, which went undetected by the Germans, shortened the war by two to four years, and saved an estimated 14 million lives. Had the war dragged on, it is conceivable that Germany would have developed atomic weapons before we did. England would have had no choice but to quickly capitulate to Hitler's demands. Russia would have fought on, even as Germany blasted Moscow and Saint Petersburg back to the stone age. Germany certainly would have supplied Japan with the bomb, and Pearl Harbor, San Francisco, and San Diego would have disappeared in an atomic conflagration. From bases in England, German aircraft carriers would have laid waste to our eastern seaboard.

In 1951 England, homosexuality was a criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment. After the war, Turing continued his research in computer science, developing the concept of artificial intelligence, but he was arrested and subsequently convicted of "gross indecency" for having a brief affair with another adult man. He was given the choice of serving two years in jail, or voluntarily undergoing chemical castration.

This highly controversial practice consisted of a series of injections of synthetic hormones which rendered him impotent and artificially repressed his sex drive. It did nothing, of course, to "convert" him to heterosexuality, it merely suppressed this aspect of his psyche.

The conviction also resulted in Turing losing his security clearance, and he was thereafter barred from his work for the government.

Turing was discovered dead in his bed, by his housekeeper, on 8 June 1954. His death was ruled as a suicide by cyanide poisoning. A half-eaten apple was discovered near his body, and it was thought that he had ingested the poison thereby. One biographer, David Leavitt, even went so far as to suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White, Touring's favorite fairy tale. Leavitt stated that Turing took "an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew."

An alternate theory proposed that the death was accidental, because Turing kept a supply of cyanide in his small apartment as part of his experiments. But the romantic notion that Turing took his own life, a broken and despondent genius, has won out.

After his conviction, Turing became an outspoken advocate of lesbian and homosexual rights, and traveled to other countries that were more open and tolerant, although he was denied permission to enter the United States. The recognition that Turing's work during WWII saved countless American lives was never taken into account. The theory that Turing was "silenced" by British Intelligence which considered him to be a security risk was never pursued.

Turing was shy as a boy, and was ostracized by his schoolmates. He formed a romantic relationship with a classmate who died from tuberculosis, and Turing named his first code-breaking computer, Christopher, in honor of his lost love.

One of Turing's legacies is the so-called, "Turing Test," the benchmark for Artificial Intelligence. According to Turing's philosophy, true AI could only be reached when a machine was capable of "thinking" so that a human could carry on a conversation, not knowing if he was speaking to man or machine. Turing called this test, "The Imitation Game."

60 years after his death, Turing received a royal pardon of his "crime" by Queen Elizabeth II. Turing has become a folk-hero of sorts. Numerous awards have been bestowed on him posthumously. Historic landmarks, plaques, and statues have sprung up in his honor, and celebrations are held in his name. He has become a rallying point for LGBT rights.

This short blog does not, and cannot, explore in-depth the issues raised within it. The Turing Test, chemical castration, the Enigma machine, "Christopher," and the life of Turing himself are subjects worthy of heavily researched books and academic papers. I entreat you to explore these areas of interest further online or at your local library.

Turing was also a marathon and ultra-distance runner of Olympic caliber. In fact, Benedict Cumberbatch trained before filming to make the running sequences believable. Turing remarked that hard running so freed his mind that his brain would fill with computational ideas. More than anything else, this pushing of mind and body beyond human endurance, best sums up his life.

When asked why he punished himself so, Turing said, "It’s the only way I can get some release."