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Ethics: Are we misusing the terms "master-slave". Do we even have a community / forum in which we can discuss this?

Philip Oakley
The recent world wide considerations of the diversity challenges in our society has highlighted that we in Engineering can be perpetuating some of the derogatory terms implicit within our use of "Master-Slave" for purely inanimate technical control scenarios. [1 - N]


We have policies on slavery that every volunteer, staff member and Trustee must read and abide to, but it appears we haven't noticed, to any significant extent, our own continued use of "slave" in our writings.


Do we even have a community or forum in which we can discuss this ethical, and publishing issue?


Philip Oakley

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53273923

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3243656.stm

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53050955

[4 ] http://www.jstor.com/stable/40061475   "Broken Metaphor: The Master-Slave Analogy in Technical Literature"

[5] https://www.theiet.org/involved/volunteering-for-the-iet/volunteer-hub/our-policies/anti-slavery-policy/


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    weirdbeard:


    “But for a bunch of white people on this forum to say "I don't think master/slave is offensive" is possibly missing the point.“


    Hi Simon, it’s a bit of a stretch to call 2 posters on this topic a “bunch”, and how are you assessing their ethnicity?


    The ensemble of IET membership is "Old White Male", so we (en masse) are not seeing the impact of these (many) wider issues. The Institution is trying to restore the balance with a number of initiatives, most of which are on the 'Promotions & Advertising' side (hoping for outcomes), but not that many on the 'active change' side (giving control input).


    Maybe contributors from the 'systems failure' community have some reflections (CEng CPD Reflections..) on this?


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    weirdbeard:


    “But for a bunch of white people on this forum to say "I don't think master/slave is offensive" is possibly missing the point.“


    Hi Simon, it’s a bit of a stretch to call 2 posters on this topic a “bunch”, and how are you assessing their ethnicity?


    The ensemble of IET membership is "Old White Male", so we (en masse) are not seeing the impact of these (many) wider issues. The Institution is trying to restore the balance with a number of initiatives, most of which are on the 'Promotions & Advertising' side (hoping for outcomes), but not that many on the 'active change' side (giving control input).


    Maybe contributors from the 'systems failure' community have some reflections (CEng CPD Reflections..) on this?


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