Alan Turing: Victim of Prejudice, Champion of Modern Expression

My country of acceptance

As I left a Starbucks Café on Sunday, I saw two men sat quite close together in a posturing that could only mean they were at a rendezvous and they were probably lovers.

I felt gratified to live in a country of liberty, tolerance, acceptance, accommodation and understanding. This was a country quite different from 60 years before.

A great and different man

To a man, we owe much and yet he was different, persecuted and prosecuted but a genius, a gift to our world lost because the establishment frowned on an expression of himself that in no way affected the abilities he brought to his vocation.

To him we owe much for his contribution to the war effort during World War II for which he was honoured and as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, the Time Magazine had this to say of him, “The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.”

For Alan Turing is today, a man, pardoned, celebrated and appreciated as the father of Computer Science.

Celebrate humanity above all

We all have needs and in all of us is a sexual expression acted upon by reason of our sexuality which in essence does not deduct from our ability to perform with excellence in other spheres of life to benefit humanity as a whole.

And as I trekked back home, I stopped by at Sackville Park where I also paid my respects to Alan Mathison Turing, 1912 – 1954, who as a victim of prejudice with the knowledge and expertise he brought to this world gave us the democracy of expression.

Choose acceptance

I would not speculate as to what else Alan Turing would have done with his far-thinking genius and ability if he had lived for longer, but we now know that the world we had 60 years ago is far different from the world we have today.

For we have the capacity for understanding diversity to accept difference and the ability to exercise tolerance for the greater cause of our humanity, if we choose to be better than what age-old beliefs and traditions have constantly taught us to do.

We must happily or grudgingly come to a point where we are able to express gratitude for our shared humanity, where we would not prejudge before we understand or castigate before we embrace – we all have a duty to be examples regardless of our beliefs, of tolerance rather than bigotry, whether we would rise to that challenge is for each individual to decide.

Nigeria: Our need to face the facts

The disgrace other Nigerians bring upon us

The Nigerian government is about to end up with egg on their faces a complete embarrassment for not conducting due diligence before taking actions of national importance.

As if we have not had enough disgrace from the iniquitous activities of our Nigerian FIFA Executive member who was recently suspended for having been recorded trying to sell his vote a greater smear is about to hit our sense of identity.

There are many high achievers of Nigerian heritage all around the world, most of whom have worked hard to reach the positions they occupy without having to exaggerate their achievements or puff up their standing falsely and they are well recognised by their peers and beyond.

Yes, he did great

However, one scientist stands to divide us between what he claims to be and what in reality he is. There is no doubt that he is intelligent and learned, his was recognised 21 years ago for some super-computing achievement which might well have been developed upon since then.

The unfortunate part of this story is no new thing has been offered beyond that achievement as would be expected of scientists but what we have is the equivalent in the popular music world of a one-hit wonder.

Again, one cannot begrudge him that accolade; he shone in that setting and he could have used his academic qualifications for gainful employment anywhere in the world and year after year produced something of considerable import.

Sadly, he failed to meet the standards necessary for awarding a doctorate degree in an American university twice and decided that it was not his pride or laziness that might have exacerbated those failures but the external malevolence of racism from the university faculty.

Nigerians do well everywhere

It would be absurd to suggest that Nigerians cannot excel and acquire doctorate degrees in American universities if they diligently do their work and offer excellent and impressive material. Nigerians have been earning doctorate degrees long before 1989 and I believe many are on doctorate programmes today with the confidence that at the end of their courses they will achieve the as it were coveted PhD.

This scientist had created a profile so large of himself that the precipitation of inference and suggestion has grown so thick it might well be impossible to get to the real truth about what exactly the man achieved and what else he has augmented beyond fallacy and fantasy.

It should not be a difficult thing to research if we take time to select each assertion he offers or every myth told about him and elicit the truth because, the truth is out there on the Internet, on professional sites, on academic sites and other verified organs besides news and self-promotion organs.

We could be conned

We have to come to the realisation that we could be taken for a ride, conned and deceived, if people fail to do their research, they can be found in error and have to face the consequences for their folly.

Reputable news agencies can get it wrong, speech-writers for presidents can get it wrong and we ourselves for our laziness can get it wrong.

Where the Nigerian government got it wrong was to honour this scientist on the basis of the myths surrounding his celebrity by putting his face on a Nigerian stamp.

Get a grip on reality

All Nigerians and those of Nigerian heritage should for all that is good and wholesome pursue excellence and aspire to be celebrated by having their faces on Nigerian stamps but the basis of that honour should not be a house of cards, a castle in the air or two birds in the bush.

Aspirations are not achievements just as dreams are not reality, a myth is what it is, a myth and if we found anything on aspirations, dreams or myths we had better be pinching ourselves constantly to keep our keep firmly on the ground and have a firm grasp of what our reality is in the progress of improving ourselves.

It is beyond doubt that this man is not who he portrays he is and it is only right that Nigerians divorce themselves from sentiment, emotion and subjective commentary, we need to seek honest and reputable role models whose achievements are impeccable, unimpeachable and without dispute.

Honesty is still the best policy

This is not a matter of tribalism, racism, jealousy or calumny, the facts speak for themselves without putting an excessive gloss on all of the subjects, everything should be seen in their contexts, their settings and their importance.

Let us ascribe honour to those who are really deserving of honour and work to ensure that we are not creating a nation and identity of honour amongst thieves.

The need for honest achievers must not be supressed for the desire to ensure that we do not do dishonest people down.

Those who ignore the truth for the safe haven of decrying black people pulling down other black people should check their principles and the kind of image they want to portray of blacks including ourselves.

We have enough of an uphill task proving we are honest, able, competent, ready and diligent, this one man places too much of a strain on what many have done to open opportunities for others.

Accept the facts

Attacks ad hominem do not help in arriving at the honest truth, if a man has misrepresented himself, it is only in the interest of everything good and true that he be exposed else no accolade would be worth anything if people can falsify unverifiable profiles to profitable ends.

The Nigerian government got it wrong and it is only right for them to admit their mistake and consign the man who has been unworthily honoured to ignominy.

The basic fact is – Mr Philip Emegwali [1] is just not what the myth about him suggests he is – he did achieve something and that has been recognised but it is no way as great as it has been made out to be, that is just the fact of the matter and there should be nothing else to say to it.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: Giving Philip Emeagwali a perspective

NOV2110 Emeagwali defense | 234Next.com

Nigeria: Giving Philip Emeagwali a perspective

The celebrity of Philip Emeagwali

I think I have had my fill of the emotions and sentiments that engender the celebrity of a Philip Emeagwali [1] whose profile makes the fantasies of Harry Potter look like a bedtime story told in 5 minutes.

I do not intend to go over any of the stuff about him that already appears on the Internet that his footprint is a mighty Sasquatch of inexactitudes that has taken advantage of lazy research and poor verification of facts and realities by supposedly reputable news organisations and political figures.

Unfortunately, everyone who has doffed their hat at the presence of the man or eulogised him to demigod status might just have to eat humble pie and accept that they of their own making have been wrong and that includes the mention President Bill Clinton made of him in one of his many speeches.

The Next story

I got involved in a commenting section on Facebook that highlighted a news article on the Nigerian Next online newspaper titled The Lies of Philip Emeagwali [2] where the writer appeared to have asked and gotten answers to a few pertinent questions.

Sahara Reporters [3] also had done a splendid job in getting at the basic truths which if any of the assertions were false would have constituted a hatchet job, but in all fairness, it was exposing someone who had effectively hoodwinked and blindsided so many that the fortress of suppositions built around him had almost precipitated into fact.

Now, Mr Philip Emeagwali is an intelligent man, he has at least a postgraduate degree in engineering, his work in winning the Gordon Bell Prize in 1989 is to be commended and acknowledged anything else beyond that smacks of embellishment bordering on the peddling of falsehoods and fraudulent representation.

My Facebook comments blogged up

My contribution as a Facebook comment was to clarify the matter of the history of the Internet, those who can lay claim to fathering the Internet and giving the Gordon Bell Prize its context.

If you want the history of the definite and indefinite article Internet [4] - there is no recollection of the history of the development of communications between systems that features this fraudster from either an academic or lazy researcher's perspective except in the cocoon of his publicity footprint [5].

The Internet pre-dates the work of Tim Berners-Lee [6] which was for the World Wide Web in March 1989, the Arpanet however derived from the work of Vint Cerf [7] amongst other which was done in the 1960s and 1970s, the protocols that define the Internet were implemented by 1982.

The commemorative plaque [8] on the Gates Computer Science Building in Stanford that identifies the clear building blocks that created the Internet and the people who put them together has dates that are long before 1989.

That Gordon Bell Prize

The much touted Gordon Bell Prize [9] was first awarded in 1987 and it is for assessing the progress of parallel computing. It has nothing to do with the Internet and there are more prestigious awards than this – “Nobel Prize” of computing, it definitely is NOT.

The documentation of the win in 1989 [10] was for Price/Performance at 400 Mflops/$1M going to Philip Emeagwali for oil reservoir modeling but the one for pure performance in the same year went to a group of 8 from Thinking Machines and Mobil Research at 500 Mflops/$1M for seismic data processing.

It is time to take sentiment and subjectivity out of this matter, if the work of Philip Emeagwali was so seminal to the creation of the Internet there is no way that information would have been lost in academic courses like the Introduction to Computer Science 101.

History cannot document the future

All the work creating the Internet pre-dates 1989 and if the World Wide Web requires the Internet, there is no way the work for which Philip Emeagwali won essentially a scond prize on performance could father a pre-existing concept.

It does not take away from Philip Emeagwali’s achievements but what he achieved in 1989 has long been surpassed, there does not seem to be any derivative work from that achievement as the bulwark of a failed scientist is to rest on his laurels and the publicity it generates rather than foster forward thinking ideas like the one that lead to the original recognition of his ability we have sadly seriously unrealised potential that was squandered on self-promotion.

Sources

[1] Philip Emeagwali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] The lies of Philip Emeagwali: 234Next.com

[3] How Philip Emeagwali Lied His Way To Fame | Sahara Reporters

[4] History of the Internet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Philip Emeagwali - A Father of the Internet - Pioneer of the Supercomputer that is an Internet

[6] Tim Berners-Lee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Vint Cerf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] File:Birth of the Internet.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] Gordon Bell Prize - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[10] Gordon Bell Prize Winners 1987 - 1989