AlfredoQuintero
Lifetime Supporting Member
Dave, I quite enjoy reading your posts. I learn a lot from them and I really like your prose, and admire the sense of striving for accuracy in your work, your writings of any kind. I think almost every one in this forum share similar aims, after all we work on machines that if they malfunction can cost from plant shut downs and material waste to human lives.
But since we live and work with all kinds of people, sometimes nuance is important. If some HR person asks to change all the manuals and all the HMI (or MMI) screens on 30 year-old machines to avoid using master/slave terminology for old DeviceNet or Mobdus IO, that's one thing.
But setting some guidelines for "new" equipment, "new" training manuals and so on, is (I believe) a good opportunity for some zeitgeist update, again, within reasonable bounds; there may be cases in which really there is no choice but to use master/slave terms.
For me I cannot ignore history and the impact it has in society overall. I was raised in privilege and had a lot of opportunity in life, and yes I took advantage of those opportunities which maybe others around me wasted. My privilege included an education in which slavery was not taught to me in a way that I would be able to grasp why so many others did not get the same opportunities; it was like a footnote of history. It took me well into my thirties after reading and thinking about these issues in depth to realize how incomplete my education was in this regard.
I think if we can strike a good balance between accuracy and human sensitivity, even if it takes some effort, I would be willing to take that effort.
But since we live and work with all kinds of people, sometimes nuance is important. If some HR person asks to change all the manuals and all the HMI (or MMI) screens on 30 year-old machines to avoid using master/slave terminology for old DeviceNet or Mobdus IO, that's one thing.
But setting some guidelines for "new" equipment, "new" training manuals and so on, is (I believe) a good opportunity for some zeitgeist update, again, within reasonable bounds; there may be cases in which really there is no choice but to use master/slave terms.
For me I cannot ignore history and the impact it has in society overall. I was raised in privilege and had a lot of opportunity in life, and yes I took advantage of those opportunities which maybe others around me wasted. My privilege included an education in which slavery was not taught to me in a way that I would be able to grasp why so many others did not get the same opportunities; it was like a footnote of history. It took me well into my thirties after reading and thinking about these issues in depth to realize how incomplete my education was in this regard.
I think if we can strike a good balance between accuracy and human sensitivity, even if it takes some effort, I would be willing to take that effort.
(sorry about the extra spaces, can't use that word)
