That quote is pretty vague, but I don't think he is trying to say that people haven't heard of Turing machines, which they obviously have. I think the point i

That quote is pretty vague, but I don't think he is trying to say that people haven't heard of Turing machines, which they obviously have. I think the point is that "textbook" turing machines, just like other "textbook" forms of engineering, are typically constructed by hand, top-down to have a specific, predictable behavior. What is interesting about Alex Smith's proof is that it implements the reverse approach, starting with an empirical discovery of the 'natural primitives' of the emergent behavior and building up the construction from the bottom up.