A new study from Prof. Lawks A. Mercy and Dr. O. Goode-Griefe of the Institute of Blogging Studies indicates that we have published absolutely loads of posts about Alan Turing this year, the Alan Turing Year. We’ve posted about Alan Turing events, Alan Turing facts, Alan Turing competitions and O mercy me have we posted about Alan Turing petitions.

So this is the last Turing post of 2012. I’ve been saving this thing up so it can be the last Turing post this year and on Wednesday morning we can put the whole mad shebang behind us.

What I’d like to bring your attention to is nothing so demanding of your attention as a petition or a campaign, but a little suggestion for a simple way to commemorate Alan Turing: Donald A. Knuth has posted on his website that it would be a nice idea to define a meaning for the verb ‘to ture‘.

“to ture” = to use the Internet.
[This] immediately looks terrific. Not only does it honor Alan in an entirely appropriate way, it also fills a real need: The English language currently has no verb with this meaning, and such a verb becomes more necessary as each day passes.

“We couldn’t ture at home this morning because the wireless was down, so we tured at the coffeehouse instead.”

(To pronounce this word, say tyoor as in ‘picture’ or ‘architecture’. While celebrating Alan’s 100th birthday in Manchester this summer I learned to call him Tyooring.)

What think you? If you agree, we could probably plant this word into the world’s vocabulary very quickly via social networks. In fact a large percentage of the world could well be turing daily before the end of 2012!

I’m behind it, and I won’t cease turing until it catches on.