  Turing was not a mechanical thinker, or a stickler for convention; far from it. Of all people, he knew the nature of originality and individual independence. Even in tackling the U-boat Enigma problem, for instance, he declared that he did so because no-one else was looking at it and he could have it to himself. Far from being trained or organised into this problem, he took it on despite the prevailing wisdom in 1939 that it was too difficult to attempt. His arrival at a thesis of ‘machine intelligence’ was not the outcome of some dull or restricted mentality, or a lack of appreciation of individual human creativity.