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How Alan Turing Finally Got a Posthumous Apology
by John Graham-Cumming | @jgrahamc | comments: 12
Guest blogger John Graham-Cumming initiated and led the successful petition drive to procure an apology to Alan Turing from the UK government. John is the author of The Geek Atlas, CTO of a stealth-mode start-up, and a longtime programmer who has a doctorate in computer security. If you’re in London this Saturday, September 19, come by the launch party for his book at the Brunel Museum.
There’s a long tradition in the UK of direct democracy, with citizens petitioning the Prime Minister themselves. Typically, thousands of signatures are collected on paper and then delivered directly to the Prime Minister’s home at No. 10 Downing Street in London. The petitioners arrive at No. 10 and hand the signatures through the open front door.
But the British government has made great strides to bring many aspects of government relations into the electronic age. Through the non-profit MySociety.org the government has created web sites (all with open-source code) for citizens to interact with local and central government offices.
One such web site is the No. 10 Downing Street petitions page (its code is open-source and can be found here).
I used the petitions web site, a collection of Web 2.0 technologies, and a bit of media savvy to successfully petition the government to apologize for the prosecution of the seminal computer scientist Alan Turing.
via How Alan Turing Finally Got a Posthumous Apology – O’Reilly Radar.