I recently watched The Imitation Game, which I had been wanting to see for awhile. I knew of this movie from my computer science and math courses and was inherently interested in the content. However after watching it I could see the content went far beyond STEM courses. This movie tells the story of Alan Turing, a gay mathematician, computer scientist, and most importantly in this movie, a code breaker. This movie told of the challenges Turing faced throughout his life, as well as his greatest accomplishment, creating a machine that broke the German enigma. This was the code the German's used to encrypt their messages during World War II, and was thought to be unbreakable. Turing's accomplishment of breaking this code shed several years off the war, as well as saved countless lives; this invention would also become a precursor to modern computers.
A very important part of this story, however, was the fact that Turing was gay, which was illegal at the time. After the end of the war Turing was found guilty of Gross Indecency and was forced to take pills for two years that would supposedly cure his homosexuality; however, due to the side effects of the drugs, and Turing not being accepted, he committed suicide just before his 42nd birthday. This was the part of the movie that struck me the most. Turing had done so much to advance the field of computer science, even before the field really existed, I can only imagine how much more he could have contributed, and how much further we could have advanced if we did not need to cut this life short. While this was over 60 years ago we are still loosing people far too young to suicide, especially LGTBQ+ youth. Imagine what they were going to go on to do, imagine how they were going to make this world better, but their life was cut short due to lack of acceptance. When we lose a human life too early we loose all of their knowledge, creativity, individuality, and potential. When a teen commits suicide humanity as a whole can suffer, because who knows what that teenager was going to become, or what they could have brought to advance a field like computer science.
A very important part of this story, however, was the fact that Turing was gay, which was illegal at the time. After the end of the war Turing was found guilty of Gross Indecency and was forced to take pills for two years that would supposedly cure his homosexuality; however, due to the side effects of the drugs, and Turing not being accepted, he committed suicide just before his 42nd birthday. This was the part of the movie that struck me the most. Turing had done so much to advance the field of computer science, even before the field really existed, I can only imagine how much more he could have contributed, and how much further we could have advanced if we did not need to cut this life short. While this was over 60 years ago we are still loosing people far too young to suicide, especially LGTBQ+ youth. Imagine what they were going to go on to do, imagine how they were going to make this world better, but their life was cut short due to lack of acceptance. When we lose a human life too early we loose all of their knowledge, creativity, individuality, and potential. When a teen commits suicide humanity as a whole can suffer, because who knows what that teenager was going to become, or what they could have brought to advance a field like computer science.
I am really glad you mention how we entirely missed out on all of Turing's potential future contributions. While he gave so much, he also had so much to offer. While this movie is an entirely different time and place, I wonder what you see as connections to LGBTQ+ youth today.
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