Do you ever think to yourself – I wish I knew how my computer worked? It might sound like a silly question, but truly most of us have no idea how our computers actually work, and yet we use them everyday with incredible ease. What happens when we hit the command key? How does hitting that key correspond with some little chip in the computer’s innards to make something happen on the screen? It’s an incredible thing when you think about it, and we take it for granted.

This question popped into my head last night as I finally got to see The Imitation Game (which is an excellent movie, by the way), and it occurred to me that not only do we not understand how our own computers work, but we don’t really know how many machines work. Surely, mechanics, engineers, and mathematicians understand how machines work since they are the ones inventing them, but the average person really has no idea and simply reaps the benefits of these machines. I’m thinking of machines such as cars, medical equipment like an MRI machine, machines in factories, etc. What marvelous inventions they are that can do work beyond the comprehension of most people. The device created by Alan Turing in The Imitation Game was the birth of computers, and not only was the film extremely well-done, it evokes themes that are really important such as technological advances, the treatment of homosexuals, and the common social handicaps inherent in geniuses.