Everyone was directly motivated at the time to solve Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem [0] which was about mathematical proof not universal machines. Turing, along with a few other mathematicians, recognized that proofs involved notions of algorithms and computation and all, together, generalized these into notions of computation we have today—Turing Machines, Lambda Calculus, Recursive Functions. So it's not terribly surprising that Turing's model was a human one. It was exactly his goal (originally).
Comments
Everyone was directly motivated at the time to solve Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem [0] which was about mathematical proof not universal machines. Turing, along with a few other mathematicians, recognized that proofs involved notions of algorithms and computation and all, together, generalized these into notions of computation we have today—Turing Machines, Lambda Calculus, Recursive Functions. So it's not terribly surprising that Turing's model was a human one. It was exactly his goal (originally).
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem