Imaginary Computational Systems

Imaginary Computational Systems

2013

In AI and Society, Special Issue on Celebrating Alan Turing, with micha cárdenas, ed. Victoria Vesna, Springer Press.

AI & Society

As a transgender woman and queer man, we are interested in Alan Turing’s breasts—they provoke us—because they are a material site of a conflict between war, queerness, technology, and the state. Turing, a war hero for code-breaking during WWII, was convicted by British authorities of gross acts of indecency for being homosexual. Thus, while his computational research was prized, his homosexuality was punished by being forced to take estrogen hormones and implants.