Publication details
The Universal Turing Machine on the Dissecting Table
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Teorie vědy : věda, technika, společnost |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://teorievedy.flu.cas.cz/index.php/tv/issue/view/19 |
| Field | Art, architecture, cultural heritage |
| Keywords | Turing machine; bachelor machine; Turing test; dissecting table; magic |
| Description | Since the beginning of the twenty-first century there has been an increasing awareness that software represents a blind spot in new media theory. The growing interest in software also influences the argument in this paper, which sets out from the assumption that Alan M. Turing's concept of the universal machine, the first theoretical description of a computer program (software), is a kind of bachelor machine (Carrouges). Previous writings based on a similar hypothesis (Daniels, Baudrillard, Turkle, Ascott) have focused either on a comparison of the universal machine and the bachelor machine in terms of the similarities of their structural features, or they have taken the bachelor machine as a metaphor for a man or a computer (artifi cial intelligence). Unlike them, this paper stresses the importance of the context (the imitation game of the Turing test) as a key to interpreting the universal Turing machine as a bachelor machine and, potentially, as a self-portrait. |