"Didn't I have calculus with you?"
"How could you possibly remember that? I barely went."
Leave me with my nerdy satisfaction of geeky references, but yes, this made me giggle. For one thing, this applies to some of the very well known historical figures in Computer Science, and for another it implies a sort of pattern of ignorance in these amazing people which is fascinating yet inapplicable to those who aspire to be them.
Not going to lie, sometimes I browse the Popular Science section in Kinokuniya just for the puns in their title. Especially in Computer Science/Mathematic related analysis and research essays. The only people who love naming their work with puns are porn makers, and computer scientists. Their puns are ridiculously cheesy, I crave for more. But really though, there were at least a cumulative of two racks of books that parodied movie titles, and I'm not complaining.
I ended up buying this book about quantum computing. Actual title is 'Computing with quantum cats: from Collosus to Qubits' and to be frank, the fact that that potentially sounded like a Fall Out Boy song is a humongous factor to the reason I felt prone to buy it. Even though they only had it in Octavo (I asked the information desk, they don't have it in any other size), I still bought it, and it was a great decision.
I actually wanted to blog about it after I finish the whole book, but I'm already halfway through it and I'm currently going through the Quanta chapter, and I think I need to read again on Feynman's PhD thesis research paper. I haven't quite grasped the concept of quantum computing just yet, and I foresee a lot of complicated theories later on that is in need of proper attention, I did however immensely enjoyed the earlier chapters of computable numbers, the revolution of artificial intelligence, and the intertwining of war and technology evolution, so I'm going to blog about that.
I mentioned before that I read Prisoner's Dillema, which is a very detailed biography on the life and times of John Von Neumann, and although he had his own chapter in this book, I was completely drawn to Alan Turing's chapter. And at the same time I've been watching Britain' Greatest Codebreaker (which is in fact Alan Turing) while doing house chorse this whole week, and I am overwhelmed with his story.
Of course, I wouldn't even argue if people want to say that Von Neumann was the better genius. I've read Prisoner's Dillema, I know how much of a wonder he is, but Alan Turing's life sounds like a plot of a fictional book, and it happened during the early twentieth century, which increases the degree of fascination towards him immensely.
I don't believe in love, but I strongly believe in infatuation and the suffering it could potentially cause. I like how significant Christopher Morcom is in Turing's life, and all his biographies and documentaries does not leave out this important piece of information. It's amazing how little Turing cared about grades and school and attending classes in general. But all that changed after he met Morcom, Similar to how Artist has their muses to maintain the quality of their arts, Turing had Morcom to feed him on science and the wonder of it all. They applied scholarships to Cambridge together, but Morcom being one year older was accepted, left Turing for a while, but later on permanently when he died of Tuberculosis.
How can someone effect your life so deeply, their imprints are left to scar and change you for the rest of your life. It's an amusing thought that Turing in retrospect, can be seen as Dr, Frankenstein creating life in a monster, only Turing didn't want to recreate Morcom, he simply belived that it was possible to create intelligence in an inorganic machine that could be permnanet and learn or store information that people could refer to. And the difference between this story and Frankenstein's is that this one ends with death and a start of an evolution, Frankenstein lack the latter.
In short, Alan Turing was brilliant. He had a budding curiosity in Chemistry and morphogenesis, one of the top cryptanalyst in Bletchley Park during the war, it was his machine that was arguably one of the first computers around, and it's a pity that his death was vaguely decided to be declared as suicide. Decades later, the government apologizes to the mistreat on him during his lifetime. And I have mixed feelings towards that. The apology seemed so long overdue, but it happened nonetheless even though it doesn't change anything.
I think I'm mildly motivated to pursue Computer Science more seriously. I say mildly because Alan Turing, Von Neumann, Feynman and Schrodingher can all be categorized as prodigies. They were simply brilliant on their own, and although I may never will be up par to their level, I have a strong urge to leave my mark in the field and just do something. I don't know what there is, but I hope it's beautiful and smells of victory and greatness.
There is a drawback however, finding such a person makes everybody else appear so ordinary. And if anything happens to him, you've got nothing left but to return to the ordinary world and a kind of isolation that never existed before.
Labels: college, cs