'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[coppice]

But I think COON cheese will get away without change since it was named after the inventor.

The people kicking up a fuss won't know that, so it won't make any difference. What might is that they'll be too young to have come across the word in general usage before, so it won't act as a trigger.

Wasn't someone prominent fired last year for saying niggardly? Ironic really, when it means mean spirited. It seems we now have to placate people who don't understand English very well.

[james_s]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

It's "wire of color" now, didn't you get the memo?

[Gregg]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

It's "wire of color" now, didn't you get the memo?

I would think that the majority of the socially outraged crowds generally are ignorant of wiring in general.  But maybe we could start a new trend.  For example, green is often designated for grounded wires; doesn’t orange feel the stigma of discrimination?

[SkyMaster]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

Black, yellow, white and brown wires need to be banned, because choosing one particular colour over the others would be a demonstration of racism 

 

[TimFox]

But I think COON cheese will get away without change since it was named after the inventor.

The people kicking up a fuss won't know that, so it won't make any difference. What might is that they'll be too young to have come across the word in general usage before, so it won't act as a trigger.

Wasn't someone prominent fired last year for saying niggardly? Ironic really, when it means mean spirited. It seems we now have to placate people who don't understand English very well.

I wouldn't be surprised about problems with "niggardly".  The word comes from Old Norse, related to "meager" or "miser", nothing to do with race or color, but it sounds horrible to the untutored ear.  There were some academic controversies before and after 2000 (mostly complaints by people unaware of the word's meaning), which led to rejections of "speech codes" at some universities due to misuse of these complaints.  There may be a new problem with racists using the word just to bait others.  The other N-word comes from Latin words for the color, through the romance languages, into English.

[james_s]

Reminds me of all the giggles and snickering about the word "mastication" when I was in 7th grade. Some words sound a lot like other words that have completely different meanings and origins. It's better to learn what words mean and how to use them properly than to worry that they may sound like something else.

[magic]

Wasn't someone prominent fired last year for saying niggardly?

America never fails to deliver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly

[tom66]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

It's "wire of color" now, didn't you get the memo?

No, it's African American wire ... get with the times!

[pickle9000]

Wow what a topic.
In any case I don't see anything here about education. For myself educating children about the subject would be far more useful. Hiding the words is like hiding the truth. The truth is often ugly but it is necessary to understand our mistakes and tendencies.

The terms Master and Slave are not ugly when applied to technology. Teach people that words can have multiple meanings when applied to different things and in different cultures, and that context and intent matter, they matters a lot. That's what you should be teaching teaching kids.

You are correct, of course. I was in fact referring to words in general and not to slave and master in particular. Context is everything.

[EEVblog]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

Black, yellow, white and brown wires need to be banned, because choosing one particular colour over the others would be a demonstration of racism 
 

Be an ally and use rainbow cable exclusively for all projects.

[EEVblog]

But I think COON cheese will get away without change since it was named after the inventor.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-23/nestle-red-skins-chicos-allens-lollies-rebrand-overtones/12384986

I think they are only 10 blue checkmark retweets away from caving.

[EEVblog]

Adafruit are replacing Master/Slave and other terms in all their documentation:
https://www.adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter

(Attachment Link)

If you are interested in how entrenched the terms are in the industry, take Adafruit's site as but one example:
https://www.adafruit.com/?q=slave

No less than 14 pages (140 actual web pages) full of products, tutorials and demos etc that use the word slave. And 52 pages (520 actual web pages) for the word master.

And even if you removed the words master and slave from every one of those 600+ pages, you'd still have MISO and MOSI embedded in documentation and source code and PCB silkscreens etc.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Are we going to ban the term "coloured wire" in case it offends people who remember pre-civil-rights times when black people were called similar terms?

Black, yellow, white and brown wires need to be banned, because choosing one particular colour over the others would be a demonstration of racism 
 

Be an ally and use rainbow cable exclusively for all projects.

In the 70's that's the ribbon cable that was all over the place, used ~ every where.

[John B]

But I think COON cheese will get away without change since it was named after the inventor.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-23/nestle-red-skins-chicos-allens-lollies-rebrand-overtones/12384986

I think they are only 10 blue checkmark retweets away from caving.

Does Coon Cheese even have a twitter account? I couldn't find anything, and people weren't tagging an obvious account.

If they don't, it's probably the sanest move for a company. Twitter just seems like a madhouse where people try to constantly outdo each other for the hottest and most inflammatory takes. I think the typical phenomenon of companies caving to mobs is because of twitter concentrating raw crazy in one area, and then companies listening to that.

Worth noting: obviously people were pointing out to this comedian that instigated the whole twatstorm, that the cheese is named after the cheesemaker. Here is his response:

Josh Thomas @JoshThomas87
Replying to @mrpford
What’s the big deal about changing it? Honestly? Who does that hurt?
11:25 AM · Jun 14, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

My, doesn't that gaslighting sound familiar? Here, just change this little thing, just one thing, why are you resisting, it's not like I have a laundry list of things after this one....

[magic]

And even if you removed the words master and slave from every one of those 600+ pages, you'd still have MISO and MOSI embedded in documentation and source code and PCB silkscreens etc.

There is literally nothing socially injust about microcontroller in sensor out
Join the revolution, comrade!

That's why this change is needed. Technical terms should reflect technical reality, not be references to abhorrent practices of white people.

[tggzzz]

And even if you removed the words master and slave from every one of those 600+ pages, you'd still have MISO and MOSI embedded in documentation and source code and PCB silkscreens etc.

There is literally nothing socially injust about microcontroller in sensor out
Join the revolution, comrade!

That's why this change is needed. Technical terms should reflect technical reality, not be references to abhorrent practices of white people.

The technical reality they should reflect is that not all slave devices are sensors, and not all master devices are microcontrollers.

[magic]

Explain it to those makers

It's good enough for them. And if you have something that's not a sensor, just change your silkscreen already

[Nominal Animal]

There is literally nothing socially injust about microcontroller in sensor out

Except miso is obviously cultural appropriation.

not all slave devices are sensors, and not all master devices are microcontrollers.

Very true.  I've been looking at ARM Cortex microcontrollers with lots of SRAM that expose a GPIO port with about 20 contiguous pins for parallel DMA to a display, and playing with tricky ways to generate the write strobe; essentially making both the microcontroller and the display slaved to an externally generated write strobe pulse train.  (Something like a gated PWM or somesuch, so that the exact number of pulses can be controlled.  In my case, rising edge would trigger the DMA, and falling edge the display parallel input latch/strobe.  Or vice versa.)  I'd be very surprised if this is unusual or rare in any way.

Just don't ask me to invent the terms to describe each part in a social justice / racially sensitive way.  My language skills fail even worse than my electronics skills.

[magic]

There is literally nothing socially injust about microcontroller in sensor out

Except miso is obviously cultural appropriation.

But look, maybe it actually is better that way. Why should we stick to some generic terms like miso/mosi and master/slave if we could come up with more meaningful names appropriate to circumstances? What does it really tell me that some SPI memory is a "slave"? What if this memory contains firmware for an MCU, shouldn't the memory be considered the "master" in this relationship, problematic as it sounds?

Those terms not only are offensive, they aren't even that helpful. I think for SPI we could adopt "externally clocked" and "internally clocked". The pins could be called "memory in" and "memory out" on a flash chip, while any clock donor driving the memory would have its own pin names, according to its diverse needs and circumstances. Note how "clock donor" is much better than "master" because it implies sharing rather than domination.

The software industry already pursues a meaningful naming policy, maybe we just need to make sensitivity specifications part of agile methodology and bring agile to EE at last?

Sounds like a topic for somebody's PhD

[tom66]

A master device initiates the transaction.  It controls everything, reads and writes,  hence the word 'master'.

A slave device never initiates the transaction.  It responds only to master, either to return read data or to complete a write.  In some cases, no read data is returned, and the device only accepts writes. And, there are a few devices that only return read data and ignore writes.

The terms "microcontroller in/sensor out" are not an accurate description.  The closest ones are something along the lines of "initiator out/target in" or "controller out/responder in".  But these are clunky,
master/slave perfectly describes the arrangement, and it isn't intended to be offensive. 

When it comes to an SPI flash, no, the 'slave' flash device is not a master no matter the data it stores. Does the flash ever boot the MCU?  No.  The MCU reads the flash in order to execute code or do something with that code.  If the flash memory had a 'brain' and could actually start controlling the bus, you might have a point.  But, it does not.

Do we have documentation of someone who is actually black who finds the terms offensive?  Rather than some pasty-white college students who have written a paper about how black people should find something offensive, because it seems most SJWs just want to role-play for minorities sometimes.

[magic]

You could substitute 'clock' for 'control' and 'clock donor' for 'master' in your post and it would still work

And yes, the MCU is the slave for it just keeps clocking the ROM to fetch more instructions to execute like a dumb little slave.

Rather than some pasty-white college students who have written a paper about how black people should find something offensive, because it seems most SJWs just want to role-play for minorities sometimes.

Don't be so dismissive. It actually is a lucrative job because if you convince them that they should take offense in something (and it isn't really that hard to find a few losers), suddenly solutions will be needed and you just happen have them
I would go to the aforementioned dreaded orange forum for example of minorities getting triggered. I'm pretty sure some brave souls exist and moderators over there will do everything to make their voices heard. That's how it was with "women in tech" back in the day. But I haven't been there in years so no linkies, sorry.

[tggzzz]

Those terms not only are offensive, they aren't even that helpful.

What is really offensive is promoting some form of equivalence between intelligent humans and machines.
What is really offensive is expecting that people can't tell the difference.

People are used to the same word having different meanings in conjunction with different subjects. Consider, for example, the word "fire" used in conjunction with a weapon, a person, or a building.

[PlainName]

Consider, for example, the word "fire" used in conjunction with a weapon, a person, or a building.

Let's see: weapon...bad, building...bad, person...bad (doubly so if you mix up meanings)

[Nominal Animal]

Why should we stick to some generic terms like miso/mosi and master/slave if we could come up with more meaningful names appropriate to circumstances?

Years ago, a Finnish band and comedy group Lapinlahden Linnut made a couple of sketches about this, actually: Tähtireki.

Eight people had survived a cataclysm that destroyed Earth, and now were amongst the stars trekking around for a new planet.  They had developed a new, much better and more efficient way to communicate: why pronounce whole words, when the first letter is enough?

They end up changing course towards a black hole, because of unfortunate communications issues when the eighth member, a shapely lady, is seen on the bridge for the first time at the same time they finally locate a habitable planet, and the appreciation by a crew member are taken as the new course.  Oops.

It is weird to see the world become more stupid than the sketches I used to see on the telly two or three decades ago.

[paulca]

That's why this change is needed. Technical terms should reflect technical reality, not be references to abhorrent practices of white people.

Slavery is a white thing now?  How fucking racist.  Off with his head.