A brilliant mathematician and computer pioneer, credited with saving
"One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other: 'My little computer said such a funny thing this morning'," was one of his predictions which has yet to be realized. But, of course, it still may be.
Another on which, in his famous paper 1951 'Can A Machine Think?' he put a time-line of 'about 50 years', was that computers would be able to carry on 'human' conversations with people. That looks like being way off-track.
MORAL: Beware of Technological Predictions.
An early prototype of being able to have realistic conversations with a robot? -
http://www.elbot.com/
Thanks Russell, but the distinguished IS department of our employer has decided to block this site. I'll have to have a look at it when I get home, best wishes, David
As for the first prediction, if you consider all the electronics that is under the hood to provide cell phones and email messages , the walk in the park is not that far off.
Human conversations with electronic circuits is still probably in the infant stage.
If the British Government hadn't destroyed all the equipment and locked the data under the 50 year rule, we might be there now. If the American Government hadn't released the bits they'd been told, we might still be using slide-rules and relay logic!
What kind of stuff is being witheld, Mr Hirst?
We may never know. Turing had to start from scratch with the Pilot ACE - if he'd used any of his classified ideas, he'd have been in even more trouble.