Turing’s enigma?
the austrian computer society OCG celebrated the 100th birthday of Alan Turing with a discussion between Reinhard Posch, among many functions “chief information officer” of the Austrian government, and philosopher Herbert Hrachovec, moderated by professor emeritus Günter Haring, both University of Vienna. the event did neither shed light on Turing’s ideas (Haring said what Turing really wanted will remain an enigma) nor on the importance of those ideas for today. Hrachovec eventually closed the gap to technology-accepter Posch when concluding that once you have no means to make distinctions the object collapses to one and only one. nobody recalled Joseph Weizenbaum’s concern about ELIZA. it was Peter Paul Sint whose intervention offered a solution to the Turing test: move your body and have a look at the room next door: there you will see whether you communicated to a computer or a person.