Are you a boygirl or are you a girlboy?

[sovay]

And today is Alan Turing's yahrzeit. Fifty-eight years. In a little over two weeks, it'll be his birthday.

I got home from my hell-shopping yesterday (I have pants! It only took me four days!) to find the mail had brought my contributor's copy of Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Science Fiction. It's a beautiful book, cover to credits. I am actively happy to have a story within its pages.

After all, speculative fiction is the literature of questions, of challenges and imagination—and what better for us to question than the ways in which gender and sexuality have been rigidly defined, partitioned off, put in little boxes.

The first version of the Turing test—he called it the imitation game—wasn't machine/human; it was male/female.

We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman?

It sounds almost like an oracle: if a man can be a woman, a machine can think. Either/or, but the line can be broken. No one knows how the machine identifies.

Across all boundaries: here's to being and thinking.

Comments

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

*No one knows how the machine identifies.*

There surely must be a poem or tale in this. I didn't know, or I'd forgotten, about that first version.

*here's to being and thinking*

And that's a worthy toast. I'm glad you got "Beyond Binary", and that pleases you.

I hope the shopping wasn't over-hellish?

(edit: is this PJ track a b-side? I'd not heard of it.)

[sovay]

There surely must be a poem or tale in this. I didn't know, or I'd forgotten, about that first version.

If you feel like writing it . . .

I hope the shopping wasn't over-hellish?

I got pants. That makes it a success.

(edit: is this PJ track a b-side? I'd not heard of it.)

It's from one of the Peel sessions; I got it off the internet years ago. Enjoy!

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

Across all boundaries: here's to being and thinking.

Amen.

[sovay]

Amen.

I think it's a good blessing. Glad you approve.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Batten down the ekeltronics, and for God's sake hide the cathode ray tubes and throw a tarp over that radio telescope.

[sovay]

Batten down the ekeltronics, and for God's sake hide the cathode ray tubes and throw a tarp over that radio telescope.

There are quite a lot of cathode ray tubes on derspatchel's dining room table right now . . .

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

...and why am I not in this book?

[sovay]

...and why am I not in this book?

I have no idea.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Well, it's an unforgivable oversight, says I.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Across all boundaries: here's to being and thinking.

Amen.

I'd not known that about the first version of the Turing test. Thank you for the sharing of it.

I'm glad you've safely got through the hell-shopping, and I'm gladder for your contributor's copy.

[sovay]

and I'm gladder for your contributor's copy.

Buy one! It's a good book!