- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: MIT Press; illustrated edition edition (4 Nov 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0262162180
- ISBN-13: 978-0262162180
- Product Dimensions: 13.6 x 2.5 x 20.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,578,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Turing (A Novel about Computation)
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Review
"... inventively interwoven with a romance and intellectual mystery." Sally Abbott San Francisco Chronicle "What's most delightful about Turing is the charmed glow that Papadimitriou's prose sheds all around." George Scialabba Boston Sunday Globe
Product Description
Our hero is Turing, an interactive tutoring program and namesake (or virtual emanation?) of Alan Turing, World War II code breaker and father of computer science. In this unusual novel, Turing's idiosyncratic version of intellectual history from a computational point of view unfolds in tandem with the story of a love affair involving Ethel, a successful computer executive, Alexandros, a melancholy archaeologist, and Ian, a charismatic hacker. After Ethel (who shares her first name with Alan Turing's mother) abandons Alexandros following a sundrenched idyll on Corfu, Turing appears on Alexandros's computer screen to unfurl a tutorial on the history of ideas. He begins with the philosopher-mathematicians of ancient Greece -- "discourse, dialogue, argument, proof...can only thrive in an egalitarian society" -- and the Arab scholar in ninth-century Baghdad who invented algorithms; he moves on to many other topics, including cryptography and artificial intelligence, even economics and developmental biology. (These lessons are later critiqued amusingly and developed further in postings by a fictional newsgroup in the book's afterword.) As Turing's lectures progress, the lives of Alexandros, Ethel, and Ian converge in dramatic fashion, and the story takes us from Corfu to Hong Kong, from Athens to San Francisco -- and of course to the Internet, the disruptive technological and social force that emerges as the main locale and protagonist of the novel.Alternately pedagogical and romantic, Turing (A Novel about Computation) should appeal both to students and professionals who want a clear and entertaining account of the development of computation and to the general reader who enjoys novels of ideas.
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First Sentence
"I'll remember his name all right," Ethel thinks as her airplane leaves behind the northern coast of Scotland. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
"I'll remember his name all right," Ethel thinks as her airplane leaves behind the northern coast of Scotland. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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8 reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Unique Tale of Romance and Discovery -- A Must Read!
31 Jan 2004
Format:Hardcover
Turing is a wonderful tale of romance and discovery in a networked society.
A clever and captivating story line guides the reader through centuries of human ingenuity and intellectual achievement. The carefully crafted characters become alive instantly as we assimilate their charisma, vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies. The author's expressiveness and attention to detail are uncanny, particularly when describing the interactions of the diverse personalities. The dialog is equally engaging and coherent, although somewhat less crisp in the middle section of the book.
In one of its central themes, Turing explores the preservation of knowledge and ideas across life spans and generations. Specifically, the book excels at demonstrating the importance of preserving not only the core innovations but also the processes, thinking patterns, and personality traits that led to their discovery. Storytelling is used throughout the book as a key tool of disseminating intellectual capital.
The successful fusion of history, economics, mathematics, computer science, and let's not forget rock lyrics, is brilliant and original. Indeed, the book illustrates the intrinsic value of merging heterogeneous subjects, cultures, and viewpoints when solving Byzantine problems.
The humorous undertone, together with a crystal clear presentation of modern scientific thoughts, make this book both educational and enjoyable.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Post-modern love story with a twist
16 Nov 2003
Format:Hardcover
A dot-com princess vacationing in a greek island meets a left-wing intellectual: Sex, web jargon, rock lyrics, post-politics, nude beaches, more sex. A bisexual, drug-addicted, HIV-positive hacker is biding his time in the Far East. Archimedes is about to discover how to use math and gears to run the economy of ancient Italy. And in the middle of all this a program named "Turing" (the name being the only stupid thing about it) inflicts upon anybody who would listen a heretical, irreverend, computer-obsessed account of Man's quest for the truth through the centuries --- in a cocky, funny, cursory monologue, often quite insighhtful and original, that fills about half of the pages and leaves too little for the thin, yet engaging, plot. Finally, a bunch of raving lunatics (you wonder how many of them are real) respond to the book in a newsgroup excerpted in an appendix.
Overall, a delightful little book, which works against all odds and despite its many oddities.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
A charming short novel
5 Mar 2004
Format:Hardcover
An interesting novel in the vein of Sophi's World. As that story introduced the reader in a gentle fashion to the history of western philosophy, this book introduces the reader to the history of computation. It is wrapped in a love story (or perhaps a love triangle story would be better). As other reviewers have mentioned, the range of topics cover is expansive and somewhat eclectic. But it works nonetheless. The newsgroup postings at the end are apparently fictional as well, or at least fictionalized.
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