Finding Ada and International Day of the Girl 2012

2012 International Day of the Girl fell on 11 October 2012 while I was in Brussels at a Turing conference, and yesterday was 2012 Finding Ada Day. I'm combining both events to recognise a true heroine of our times, 14-year old Pakistani girl Malala Yousufzai shot in the head, for daring to speak out to be schooled, by a Talebanist who undoubtedly sees educated women as a threat and prefers his women-folk to be subjugated and subservient to men. Unfortunately this sentiment and thinking is not confined to the Taleban.

Image from Upworthy Facebook page

On one trip to Pakistan, Islamabad in January 2000 sitting on the balcony of my sister's apartment in F11 district I could hear (Mosques, on 'every corner' as pubs once were in Britain, appear to have the best hi-fi systems in the world to ensure no-one misses the call to prayer) distinctly, from a number of other Mosque moralisms, one particular Maulvi/Cleric's rantings, and they were rantings, planting at the feet of all women all the problems of the world, drugs, etc., since she decided to leave the kitchen and throw-off her family carer garb. With my younger sister I wondered how the men in the Mosque would treat their female family members once they returned home; would harsh words, or worse be spoken to a daughter wanting to pursue further education?

Pakistan has slipped down the liberal-thinking ladder since 9/11; it is not the same country as it was back in 2000 and I was shocked at the Islamabadian cleric's clear misogyny then. However, Malala Diary of a Pakistani School Girl Yousufzai's shooting in the head was a stab in the heart for all, not just in Pakistan, who demand rights for girls, that they be given the same access to opportunity as boys, regardless of prevalent social and economic thinking.

In the first year of International Day of the Girl Child Malala Yousufzai is my Ada 2012 - her recovery will fuel girl interests in all subjects of study, including science, computing, engineering, maths and physics. Governments of Pakistan-like nations must ensure these girls are availed with the opportunities they deserve as human beings on this planet.


Malala Yousufzai official website: http://malalayousafzai.webnode.com/

News reports for Malala Yousufzai:

Amnesty International

http://action.amnesty.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1194&ea.campaign.id=16893&gclid=CNS4lqjYh7MCFYXJtAodvi4ABQ

BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7834402.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-19966357

Other links:

Finding Ada: http://findingada.com/

International Day of the Girl: http://dayofthegirl.org/about/

UN General Assembly Resolution adopting International Day of the Girl Child: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/66/170

45th Anniversary of Weizenbaum's Eliza and IBM Watson success

Happy 45th birthday ELIZA!


I've been meaning to post a message here since IBM Watson's remarkable question-answer success last month in the US TV general knowledge quiz show Jeopardy! This is IBM's second man vs machine success, previously by Deep Blue in chess against Gary Kasparov in 1997.


45 years ago in January 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum unveiled the first computer programme, ELIZA, permitting communication between a human and a machine. The interaction used the text-based medium, which Alan Turing had proposed in 1950 as a means to examine whether a machine could think.

What is thinking? If you want to know, watch Watson's February 2011 performance against two humans in Jeopardy!

Christie's auction of Turing offprints fails to achieve reserve price while Apple 1 sells for £110k

Steve Wozniak attended Christie's auction house at their magnificent King Street SW1 venue today and, as I did, witnessed the sale of an Apple 1 computer for £110,000.





Alas, Newman's collection of Turing paper offprints failed to achieve the reserve price of £300,000. This is so surprising, less than a fortnight ago (12 November 2010) a Chinese vase exceeded expectations, sold for £43million.


It was an exciting 1 1/2 hours this afternoon witnessing auction history in Christie's. Definitely, as Professor Max Newman's collection, Lot 60, neared for sale the heart began to pound. Thanks to the 20th century's brilliant mathematician, Alan Turing, I'm getting to enjoy science in many ways. Roll on Turing centenary year, 2012 .....



[pictures from Christie's web site]

Beyond Darwin, Turing's Biology of Creation, Chemistry of Nature: The Secret Life of Chaos

The perspicacious physicist, Baghdad-born Professor Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of the excellent three-part BBC series Language of Science returns with a stunning tale of chaos:

A system completely described by mathematical equations that is more than capable of being unpredictable without any outside interference, whatsoever. (Al-Khalili, 2010: BBC4)

Launching The Secret Life of Chaos, Al-Khalili acquaints us with another seminal paper by 20th century mathematician, Alan Turing: The chemical basis of morphogenesis. In 1952, Turing was the first man to take on the momentous task of unravelling nature's mysterious mathematics, Al-Khalili reveals. Turing, grasping the idea, that the wonders of creation derive from the simplest of rules, wondered about 'mind', what is it?, explained Turing's biographer, Dr. Andrew Hodges featured in Al-Khalili's programme.

Familiarising viewers with the butterfly effect (flapping of wings in one place can effect massive change, such as in weather, somewhere else), and the link between nature's power to self-organise, Al-Khalili demonstrated that chaos is everywhere, unpredictability is hard-wired into every aspect of the world we live in, and that global climate can dramatically change in the course of a few short years. Order is linked to chaos, Al-Khalili showed. Moving through Belousov's patterns to Mandelbrot's set, Al-Khalili's journey to the centre of chaos shows us that feedback gives rise to both order and chaos and involves pattern formation, which is deeply woven into fabric of the universe. Patters are everywhere, just waiting to happen, Al-Khalili added.

Complexity is based on simple rules, which themselves give rise to complexity through a feedback loop. Spontaneity emerges from the feedback of simple rules, organisms replicate with a few random mutations now and again. Feedback comes from the environment which favours mutations best-suited to it. Nature's ability to turn simplicity into complexity explains why life exists, Al-Khalili maintains, and that it is evolution, a powerful system of creative power, which has caused the universe, full of simple dust to create human beings, causing inanimate matter to spawn intelligence from simple rules. It is evolution, an unconscious process, which hones patterns and experiments by mutating, finding what works and then builds upon this.

Design, Al-Khalili concluded beautifully, does not need an active, interfering designer; self-organising complex systems develop from simple rules, without conscious thought. Professor Jim Al-Khalili's The Secret Life of Chaos can be viewed here.


Mandelbrot set image: Scientific American

Happy New Year Twenty-ten - 60th Anniversary of Alan Turing's MIND paper

Image of fireworks around the London Eye, New Year's Eve (from Sky News)

Let's hope the new year, Twenty-ten, brings forth a fresh decade of compassion and opportunity that is far removed from, as described by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the "terrible and gruelling" Noughties.

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of Alan Turing's MIND paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence - his Imitation Game, and the question of whether a machine can think remains much 'beloved' for philosophers of mind!

"I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'."

Read the full paper on Hugh Loebner's Artificial Intelligence Prize site.


2010 is also the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, world’s oldest science academy of which Alan Turing was a Fellow.

Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton Terrace SW1 (picture: copyright KaihsuTai)

Royal Society's 350th anniversary events will include celebrating "local heroes .. pioneers, mavericks and geniuses, who for centuries have changed the way we live and see the world", and a summer Festival of Science at the Southbank (more information here and here).

Update: 4 January, 2010: BBC Radio 4 In Our Time

In a four-part series which began this morning (repeated tonight at 21.30), Melvyn Bragg introduces the history of the Royal Society, with a visit to Wadham College, Oxford. Listen here (45 mins).

Neal Stephenson's (author of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon), Baroque Cycle, beginning with Quicksilver is a must read adventure of the period encapsulating the enigmatic and eminent characters in the early days of the Royal Society, including Sir Isaac Newton.