[Legacy Report] Alan Turing Birth Centenary Lecture

---

Alan Turing devised a universal abstract computing device in
1936, known to us all as the Universal Turing Machine. Computer
Scientists have explored this device’s boundaries and its capacities
ever since and found that different ways of defining mechanical
computation to all be confined to the boundaries perceived by
Turing. Turing also proposed a test for checking whether such a
device could only perform algorithmic activity in a theoretically
closed domain, or could it be like humans and learn from
experience, thereby exhibiting intelligence In contrast, during the
wars, there were posts called ‘computers’ to which people could
apply, implying the people could compute, and that not only
machines could be deployed for such a purpose.
In fact information processing by people most of the time cannot
be undertaken by machines, such as demands made in the
presence of incomplete information, ambiguous information, and
the like. Every person is engaged in such activities throughout
their lives. To paraphrase this situation, there is, perhaps, more
computing outside the box than within! Or, put differently, whilst
Turing defined the box and characterized it, he never said that our
focus should truly be on and in the box. We have made that our
preoccupation! Can we start moving away from this
preoccupation? Can we start taking a holistic view of computation
(information processing)? This exploration is at the heart of this
lecture. We believe that the central problem in front of us is to
consider the semantics of human processes (in contrast with
computational processes in which information processing is
mechanistic), where information processing is done by people, not
automatons. Such semantics must consider management, and
reasoning in domains wherein arguments to assert that gaols in the
domain are constructively met. We explore such issues before
embarking on its formalization.

---

---

---

---