Alan Turing Watch

We have this long list of tasks and occupations that we humans believe\nonly humans can do. Used to be things like using tools, language,\npainting, playing chess. Now, one by one they get Turing'd. A computer\nbeats them. Does it better.

So far we've can check off arithmetic, spelling, flying planes, playing\nchess, wiring chips, scheduling tasks, welding, etc. All have been\nTuring'd.\n

Pure suggests that Turing may have turned his attention to\nartificial intelligence--a field that explores, at its core, the meaning\nof life--to celebrate Chris's life and let it live on in his work. In\nalmost every scene, Turing has a brief conversation with the dead\nChris; it later becomes clear that the entire play is set in the hazy\nmoments before Turing's death, when he is hallucinating or perhaps\ncommunicating with Chris's spirit in the afterlife.

Videogames, in effect, are beyond Turing. As Bart Simon, a\nsociologist who studies videogames at Concordia University in Montreal,\nput it in a recent paper (.doc): \"The solo game is posthumanistically social.\"\nIt's about the pleasures of hanging out with machines even when you're\naware they're merely machines.