De Luna, Kobe Jee B. ST-4L2015-06683 Assignment 001 Can machines think? It’s been over eight decades since World War 2 marked a point in the history of humankind. This is also the time where machines, in general, started to prosper, including the start of what we know today as computers. Unlike today, the use of computers during this period is mostly for military use. The German enigma which is a highly complex encryption and decryption tool inspired the rise of the machines pioneered by British mathematician, Alan Turing. This particular moment in history became a turning point for the Allies to win against the Axis. In addition, in this period, the relevance of using a computer had become an advantage in a sense that computer has been used to decrypt an Enigma-encrypted messages sent by the Germans. As what Alan Turing has said in the film, “What if only a machine, can defeat another machine? Thus, computer will be completely relevant in this particular period of time in order to intercept the messages being sent by the Germans. Like every other inventions, the machine that Turing theorized also did not go smoothly in implementation. There are several hindrances that blocked the earlier success of this machine. Firstly, Alan Turing lacks connection to his other peers. This has probably emerged from when he was bullied during the time of his schooling. His attitude of being too awkward or too shy to other people also became a hindrance as he was not able to delegate any tasks to his team. It made me realize that even a design of a genius, needs teamwork. Secondly, despite the days and hours that it took for the machine to run, the machine failed to deliver proper results because of the machine being altered throughout the war . This has proven how complex and powerful the German enigma machine which also became a hindrance to the team because of its puzzling and mysterious nature. Third, the machine was severely opposed by the higher-ups that prompted him to resort to other way of convincing them, highly believing that only a machine can beat a machine. Even though enigma has been proven itself to be very hard to crack, it does not stop Alan Turing from creating his theorized machine. For several trials, his machine did not produce the output he expected but this is only until he discovered a solution in a serendipity manner. Who would have imagined that the piece of information that he needs to successfully implement his machine will be through a normal conversation with another person. Starting from this period, it has always been a wonder how the machines have evolved from these very large piece of machine to the modern computer we possess today. There are various differences that can be easily seen between the two. First of all, the machines at that period seemed to perform only one task at a time, which in this context, is the breaking of the German enigma code. Meanwhile, the machines emerging today, are capable of performing multiple tasks such that whenever computers are mentioned, we also do think a machine that is able to perform multitasking. Another subtle difference that we can see is their size and portability. The size of the machine that was done by Turing and his team is comparably larger and can only be contained within a room as compared to what we have today which can be brought just by pockets. Along with portability, the ones that we have today is used mainly for convenience while the computers back then are mainly used for military purposes such as encrypting and decrypting messages. For similarities, both computers can be used to deal with very high and complex number of computations. Generally, the whole film relate to Computer Architecture as a course since we can see a machine that is being operated at very low level. Also, the film showed us the little overview of the composition of decrypting machine which are made of rotors and plugboard. Computer Architecture is formally defined as a set of rules and methods in which the machine invented by Turing shares the same definition that eventually enabled implementing its core functionality. The whole film relate to Computer Science as a field because of its algorithmic approach in which the team followed in order to produce a definite output. However, cracking enigma technology has proven itself to be one of the toughest. Thus, it embodies two of the core principles of computer science which are problem solving and solution finding. In addition, computer science is also highly interrelated to another branch of mathematics which is logic. The making of the machine definitely followed a logical approach. Computer Science also deals with theories which are really evident at the time of World War 2.   The modern technology that we have today definitely came from a very long way. But no matter how many inventions have emerged, how many algorithms have been formulated, and how many solutions have been implemented, the bucket containing these things will never be emptied. And that’s why we computer scientists are present: to find solutions to our current problems.