Turing developed the computer among other remarkable achievements in mathematics and biology, including decrypting the German communication code which shortened WWII by some years.

The fundamental binary code for Alan Turing, the computer pioneer, was Body and Spirit.

His interest in spirit came from  an intense short-lived adolescent homosexual relationship with Christopher Morcom who died in Turing’s 18th year.  Turing felt his spirit lived on after leaving the body and influenced his life and work.

After he lost his government security clearance and was chemically castrated for illegal homosexuality he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

In his essay, The Nature of Spirit, Turing wrote,  “Then as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I consider that the body by reason of being a living body can ‘attract’ and hold on to a ‘spirit’ whilst the body is alive and awake and the two are firmly connected.  When the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but when the body dies the ‘mechanism’ of the body, holding the spirit, is gone and the spirit finds a new body sooner or later perhaps immediately.”

There is a spirit underlying all material and abstract reality including bits and bytes.

When we develop a website, can we project beyond the commodity or service to touch on the spirit behind the site ?

Raise the philosophical questions about the meaning of the meaning of life, which have no answers but the quest creates the spirit.

We don’t know where we came from, what we are doing here or what comes after but something motivates us to live beyond the material, our spirit, until something dies or is forgotten.

Why not put some “why?” in your website whether it be selling lipstick or a vacation?

Depth exudes quality.

(Curiosity: The bite out of the Apple logo is not a tribute to Turing, but gives  the logo scale to avoid being mistaken for a cherry or tomato.  The Macintosh is also a  type of apple.)

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Vincent Van Gogh, “The Sower”

If Jesus designed a website he would probably use parables.

Consider this example of how to test a market;

“A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up.  Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture.  Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil.  It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

-Luke 8:5

There is never a perfect moment for launching a site, but once launched we measure:

• The audience we didn’t reach – the seed that withered and died.

• The audience that had a negative reaction – the seed trampled on.

• The audience that multiplied a hundred-fold – the seed on good ground.

It helps the client understand that the marketing of a site is not a  perfect process and needs to be constantly  adapted to the shifting conditions.

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More matter with less art.

Hamlet, 2.2.95

Words, words, words, no matter from the heart.

Troilus and Cressida, 4.3.108

Many men construe things after their fashion,

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

Julius Caesar, 1.3.34

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

Richard III, 4.4.358

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

King Lear, 1.4.346

For things are often spoke and seldom meant.

Henry IV, Pat 2, 3.1.268

It is not enough to speak, but speak true.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 3.1.120

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Hamlet, 3.2.213

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.4

Like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect.

Hamlet, 3.3.41

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