If you ask me, John Von Neumann was more than capable of inventing computers on his own, and in fact in the real postwar world they developed about as fast as they could have done whether Turing was alive or not. It’s sadly plausible that if he had lived longer he would have had more to contribute but most likely in other mathematical fields, not in the practical development of the computer, where many others played key roles (as they did at Bletchley). This seems to me an unhelpful contribution to the myth of Turing as ‘Mr Computer’. Plausible humanoid robots have appeared in 1982. The prime difference here is that in the world of the novel, Alan Turing did not die, and was mainly responsible for a much faster development of computers and IT. But perhaps prices are misleading, because we are in an alternate world. Surely you’d charge more, too – you could easily spend £86k on a fancy new car. This doesn’t seem to make much commercial sense if these are prototypes you wouldn’t sell them if you’re ready to market them you’d be gearing up to make thousands of them, at least. The robot is called Adam twenty-five of these robots have been created, twelve Adams and thirteen Eves, on the market for a mere £86,000 each. I don’t think it’s that easy, though in fairness these feats only resemble the common literary trick where our hero’s facility with languages or amazingly retentive memory somehow makes him able to perform brilliantly at tasks that actually require things like insight and originality. No real explanation for these superpowers is given it’s kind of assumed that direct access to huge volumes of information together with a computational brain just naturally make you able to do these things. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s a terrifically interesting robot he’s not very different to a naïve human in most respects, except for certain unlikely gifts an ability to discuss literature impressively and an ability to play the stock market with steady success.

Ian McEwan’s latest book Machines Like Me has a humanoid robot as a central character.

Book machines like me