4 ms·

It's remarkable how much drama is being manufactured over a non-issue. There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't real

It's remarkable how much drama is being manufactured over a non-issue. There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy.

elliekelly 6y ago
Is “slave” an industry term of art? Certainly most people are familiar with the concept of a “master copy” - keys, documents, etc. but computer networking is the only time I’ve ever encountered the word “slave” thrown around so cavalierly.
- nkurz 6y ago
  Yes, both "master" and "slave" have been used as a pair for a long time in a number of different technical fields to describe relationships between devices. Instead of computer networking, the linked article is on a site that focuses on music technology (https://cdm.link https://cdm.link). If you search (for example) [midi "slave"] you'll come up with a lot of hits using "slave" in a technical sense for electronic music. Here's a nice example page from that search, that goes farther to distinguish (technically and without irony) two different types of masters and slaves: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/synchronization/synchronization_master_and_slave_c.html https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuend....
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Master and slave cylinders also exist for break cylinders and guess what computer hardrives were largely historically before flash? Rotating cylinders of some sort even if the memory was tape. That are literally "driven" by the master. Having no motive of their own only driven by the master. It is a tasteless pun metaphor at worst.
nkurz 6y ago
> There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy. True, although in the case of this article it's talking more about music technology like MIDI, where rather than "original" or "reference" it usually means something closer to "leader" or "commander". But this misses the point of the article. The suggestion isn't that we should drop the historic terms to improve the precision of tech communication. Rather, the worry is that habitualizing the terms "master" and "slave" in technology desensitizes us to concept. If we accept that one device is naturally the "master" of other devices, perhaps we are more willing to accept that one human can be the master of other humans. If we accept that the role of one device is to be merely a "slave", perhaps we won't recoil sufficiently at the notion that one human might be enslave another. Certainly, one can disagree with this premise. Why should using the same language to describe one concept influence attitudes toward another? But rather than suggesting that author is pretending not to understand a standard industry term, you'd do much better to argue about the point the article is actually making.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  The terms are already desensitizes and as someone wrote earlier, no person alive was ever a slave, so the sensibility is not justified. When we use these terms we don't think of a black slave in USA 200 years ago, these are terms that are totally repurposed.
  - nkurz 6y ago
    > as someone wrote earlier, no person alive was ever a slave They may have written this, but it is strikingly false. By most accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of people alive today living as slaves in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa Not quite on point, but here's a great Atlantic article from a couple years ago about someone who realizes late in life that his family had a slave: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-s...

elliekelly 6y ago

Is “slave” an industry term of art? Certainly most people are familiar with the concept of a “master copy” - keys, documents, etc. but computer networking is the only time I’ve ever encountered the word “slave” thrown around so cavalierly.

nkurz 6y ago
Yes, both "master" and "slave" have been used as a pair for a long time in a number of different technical fields to describe relationships between devices. Instead of computer networking, the linked article is on a site that focuses on music technology (https://cdm.link https://cdm.link). If you search (for example) [midi "slave"] you'll come up with a lot of hits using "slave" in a technical sense for electronic music. Here's a nice example page from that search, that goes farther to distinguish (technically and without irony) two different types of masters and slaves: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/synchronization/synchronization_master_and_slave_c.html https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuend....
Nasrudith 6y ago
Master and slave cylinders also exist for break cylinders and guess what computer hardrives were largely historically before flash? Rotating cylinders of some sort even if the memory was tape. That are literally "driven" by the master. Having no motive of their own only driven by the master. It is a tasteless pun metaphor at worst.

nkurz 6y ago

> There's a zero percent chance the people putting in the effort to promote this don't realize that 'Master' is an industry term of art meaning original or reference copy. True, although in the case of this article it's talking more about music technology like MIDI, where rather than "original" or "reference" it usually means something closer to "leader" or "commander". But this misses the point of the article. The suggestion isn't that we should drop the historic terms to improve the precision of tech communication. Rather, the worry is that habitualizing the terms "master" and "slave" in technology desensitizes us to concept. If we accept that one device is naturally the "master" of other devices, perhaps we are more willing to accept that one human can be the master of other humans. If we accept that the role of one device is to be merely a "slave", perhaps we won't recoil sufficiently at the notion that one human might be enslave another. Certainly, one can disagree with this premise. Why should using the same language to describe one concept influence attitudes toward another? But rather than suggesting that author is pretending not to understand a standard industry term, you'd do much better to argue about the point the article is actually making.

AdrianB1 6y ago
The terms are already desensitizes and as someone wrote earlier, no person alive was ever a slave, so the sensibility is not justified. When we use these terms we don't think of a black slave in USA 200 years ago, these are terms that are totally repurposed.
- nkurz 6y ago
  > as someone wrote earlier, no person alive was ever a slave They may have written this, but it is strikingly false. By most accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of people alive today living as slaves in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa Not quite on point, but here's a great Atlantic article from a couple years ago about someone who realizes late in life that his family had a slave: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-s...