White Out

Political Correction Fluid (ie White Out).

I always thought it was weird; glad I'm not the only one. When I decided to slap together a barebones Asus ten years ago, I was surprised to find the configuration referred to as master-slave. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but whenever it comes up, a part of me does wonder why we don't put this higher on the politically correct priority list, like somewhere above he/she/xe.

Like is the terminology we use for computers hundreds of years old or something, where we just keep using the same words even though their original meaning is completely lost? (Oh wait, but is that part of the hegemony of the privileged, ie, it's so ubiquitous it's invisible?)

Turns out that yes, these terms do come from a place long before Mr. Babbage's scribbles. Well, not too long before that - they're from the world of motor control, when we started to make really complicated machines; maybe it goes all the way back to watchmaking. But it stops here, 2018.

As far back as 2003, folks in California were asking manufacturers to come up with a better alternative that doesn't make us all really uncomfortable. Maybe we're not all really uncomfortable. Then again, maybe the people who are uncomfortable don't really matter. Or they don't matter enough, in comparison to how important it is to maintain the lexical inertia of engineering.

Regardless, one of the main programming languages of our time has now decided to rearrange the playbook, or the instruction manual, as it were. Personally, however, I'm really not happy at all with the results. Parent-helper and parent-worker sound stupid to me.


Notes:
Master/Slave Terminiolgy Removed from Python
Sep 2018, VICE
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language