Turing's man : A dialogue

• We can never emulate their meekness,soft servants of durable material:they live without pretensionin complicated relays and electrical circuits. Speed, docility are their strength. One asks: "What is 2 × 2?"-"Are you a machine?"They answer orrefuse to answer, depending on what you demand. There are, however, other machines as well,more abstract automatons, bolder and moreinaccessible,which eat their tape in mathematical formulae. They imitate in language. In infiniteloops, farther and farther back in their retreattowards more subtlealgorithms, more recursive functions. They are logical and describe themselves. As when a man with a hand-mirror pressed against his nosein front of a mirrorsees in infinite rows the same image multipliedin a shrinking, darkening corridor of glass. It is a Gödel theorem as good as any. He sees infinity,but what he does not see is his face.(From Göran Printz-Påhlsońs poem "The Turing Machine" published in Säg minns du skeppet Refanut? Samlade dikter 1950-1983 (1984) Bonniers, Stockholm).

Nyckelord

Automatons

Breaking the code

Enlightenment

Gödel theorem

Technological society

The Turing Machine

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