05.22.06
The Diamond Age: Sixteenth Post (Turing)
Hackworth’s plot is still confusing the hell out of me. I’m sure that it will eventually make some sense, but it is nowhere near doing so at the moment. Nell’s plot line is a little better. I’m interested in finding out what will happen to her now that she is out on her own.
I’m slightly disconcerted by Stephenson’s seeming fascination with Alan Turing and Turing machines. They have played fairly important roles in both of the books by Stephenson that I have now read. I don’t remember many specifics about the subject from Cryptonomicon, but I do remember getting the impression that Stephenson worshiped Turing in a way, as well as seeing major limitations in his machines and way of thinking (which Stephenson seems to view as largely the same thing). This book is giving me essentially the same impression. Stephenson seems to have a reverence for Turing that can only be had for someone who is only known through their work and never personally. It’s as though Turing is to him what Queen Elizabeth I or Alexander the Great are to other people. At the same time, he always sees Turing’s work as being implicitly limited. In his view, Turing machines can do an extraordinary number of things and exist in a wide variety of forms, but are always essentially the same. It’s as though he believes that Turing only ever had one real, original idea, but was able to adapt it to a great many specific purposes largely unchanged. It’s very strange. I don’t know all that much about Turing, and I can’t say that I really have the desire to look for more information about him, but this element of Stephenson’s work is vaguely interesting and even slightly perplexing. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt about anyone the way Stephenson seems to feel about Turing. Perhaps it will make more sense later, but I doubt it.