Wi-Fi
If Alan Turing were still alive today, perhaps he might have been able to cycle over from Baston Lodge, his old childhood home in St Leonards, and fix my Wi-Fi. While he was fiddling around with the invisible wires, perhaps he might be able to answer the question: do I really need it?
The government has long been committed to getting the whole country ‘switched on’ to computers. Knowledge is power of course, and as there are so few libraries left, we have to go somewhere to look things up. But the idea that we should be able to be ‘online’ anywhere from cafes to train carriages seems a bit extreme, but maybe I’m being old-fashioned.
Sadly, Alan Turing is not able to help, his being a tragic, premature end at his own hand after a public disgrace for which he received a posthumous apology from the prime minister in 2009. However, the time he spent growing up in this corner of the south coast is increasingly being celebrated. In 2011, the road leading to Sussex Coast College was christened Turing Way. Last month, MP Amber Rudd wrote to the Minister of State for Universities and Science to make a plea for Hastings to be the chosen site for George Osborne’s pledge for an Alan Turing Institute.
She may be up against stiff competition for this £42m project. The dons at Cambridge for instance, where he wrote his paper On Computable Numbers, which proved fundamental in the invention of the modern computer, are certain to put their hands up. Sherborne School, where he honed his Latin, may make a squeak. However, there is a rising feeling that it was bracing walks along the windswept promenade that gave him such a clear head. Aided by the teaching he received until he was 14 at the local St Michael’s day school – and the firm moral steerage provided by his Sussex guardians, Colonel and Mrs Ward – his own parents having spent most of his childhood out in India. In short, Hastings did its bit to shape the man whose complex code-breaking helped us win the war. And he didn’t do it by looking things up on the internet.
Next week: Marine Court drama
The government has long been committed to getting the whole country ‘switched on’ to computers. Knowledge is power of course, and as there are so few libraries left, we have to go somewhere to look things up. But the idea that we should be able to be ‘online’ anywhere from cafes to train carriages seems a bit extreme, but maybe I’m being old-fashioned.
Sadly, Alan Turing is not able to help, his being a tragic, premature end at his own hand after a public disgrace for which he received a posthumous apology from the prime minister in 2009. However, the time he spent growing up in this corner of the south coast is increasingly being celebrated. In 2011, the road leading to Sussex Coast College was christened Turing Way. Last month, MP Amber Rudd wrote to the Minister of State for Universities and Science to make a plea for Hastings to be the chosen site for George Osborne’s pledge for an Alan Turing Institute.
She may be up against stiff competition for this £42m project. The dons at Cambridge for instance, where he wrote his paper On Computable Numbers, which proved fundamental in the invention of the modern computer, are certain to put their hands up. Sherborne School, where he honed his Latin, may make a squeak. However, there is a rising feeling that it was bracing walks along the windswept promenade that gave him such a clear head. Aided by the teaching he received until he was 14 at the local St Michael’s day school – and the firm moral steerage provided by his Sussex guardians, Colonel and Mrs Ward – his own parents having spent most of his childhood out in India. In short, Hastings did its bit to shape the man whose complex code-breaking helped us win the war. And he didn’t do it by looking things up on the internet.
Next week: Marine Court drama