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I'm sorry to do this but : The Nazis The used census data from the 1930's innocently collected by govts and collated by IBM subsidiaries. The subsidiaries th
by SixSigma 11y ago
I'm sorry to do this but :
The Nazis
The used census data from the 1930's innocently collected by govts and collated by IBM subsidiaries. The subsidiaries then passed this on to the Nazis a few years later when the govts were conquered.
Then the Hollerith machines did a query : "select person if parent=Jew or grandparent=Jew"
you didn't thinnk they did it with pencil and paper now did you ?
Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM, didn't get his 1937 Order of the German Eagle for nothing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_German_Eagle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_German_Eagle
- sjackso 11y agoPart of the brilliance of idleword's approach in this talk is in his avoidance of Godwin-level rhetoric. You don't need to posit an authoritarian dictatorship to see big data as hazardous. "Nixon in your datacenter" is the perfect image for this purpose, because it's funny in a way that "Hitler in your datacenter" never could be, and also easier to imagine.
- SixSigma 11y agoYeh, I realised that, hence my apology. But IBM's involvement with the Third Reich is an example where the nightmare of data retention leading to mass murder has already happened. Every time you tick the boxes on in the equal opportunities compliance area you could be setting yourself up for disaster. If you were a Ugandan student in Britain in 2000 you might have ticked the "[ ] Homosexual" box and had the nightmare of The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, passed by the Parliament of Uganda on 20 December 2013 with the death penalty proposal dropped in favour of life in prison. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Act,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Act,...