The other day I had the privilege of attending an advance screening of the forthcoming movie The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. I am not a movie reviewer, so I will not offer an evaluation of the movie -- other than to say that it is superb.

What particularly interests me is the story itself and the extraordinary range of deeply important issues it poses. The Imitation Game traces the real-life tale of Alan Turing, the brilliant and highly idiosyncratic British scientist and philosopher whose secret contributions during World War II saved the lives of an estimated 14 million individuals by enabling the Allies to win the war much sooner than would otherwise have been possible.

Still in his twenties, Turing led a small cohort of odd-ball cryptographers in a top secret effort to discover the secret of the Nazis' Enigma machine. It was through the use of this machine that the Nazis were able to send encrypted messages to their forces throughout the world. It was, at the time, the most effective and unbreakable code ever invented.

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