Hi Caitlin,

I'm not sure if this is the sort of thing you're looking for, but some CS pioneers were rather keen to use the master-slave metaphor to talk about human-computer relations. Eg:

Jack Good reported that: "Turing used to refer jocularly to people who are forced to do
mechanical operations as slaves."

Bardini quotes Engelbart: "Think ahead to the day when computer technology might provide for your very own use the full-time services of a completely attentive, very patient, very fast symbol-manipulating slave who has an IQ adequate for 95% of your today's mental tasks."

And there's this unfortunate Newsweek caption about Harry Huskey.

I think probably links back to earlier tropes about robots: eg in Capek's RUR, the rebellious robots are precisely slaves. I've got an unpublished conference paper I wrote a few years back about this which I could dig out if you're interested.

Cheers,
Mark




On 23 May 2017 at 18:29, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Caitlin, this is an interesting study!

I'm not sure, though, if "today's engineers" would very readily coin gender-specific terms for parts of computers.  These terms go back a long way.

The "master-slave" terminology has going for it that the relationship between, say, a bus arbiter and connected devices is, in truth, a master-slave relationship.  The other connotations make it hard for me to use the terms in class, but it's difficult to find synonyms.  Controller-controlled?  Decider-doer?  Kind of awkward.  (Suggestions welcome!)

In contrast to the gendered terms, in describing the tree data structure, the relationship between nodes has always been parent-child, back at least to Knuth's volumes, not father-son, mother-son, or the like.  Same with object/class hierarchies.

- Bill

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From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Wylie, Caitlin Donahue (cdw9y) [cdw9y@eservices.virginia.edu]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2017 8:11 PM
To: members@SIGCIS.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] History of gendered terms, e.g., "motherboard"

Dear all,
Do you know of any studies of gendered language in computing? I’m intrigued by the way today’s engineers throw around words like “motherboard” and “daughterboard”, and also “master” and “slave”, without being aware of how those words sound to non-engineers (like me). I’d be interested in learning about historical or sociological studies.

Thank you!

All the best,
Caitlin Wylie
_______________________
Caitlin D. Wylie, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Program in Science, Technology and Society
University of Virginia
wylie@virginia.edu<mailto:wylie@virginia.edu>
http://www.eands.virginia.edu/faculty-staff/wylie/

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