cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36066218

Archive - Desktop Archive.

In the mid-1950s, IBM approached Jacques Perret, a Classics professor at the Sorbonne, with a question. They were about to sell a new kind of computer in France, the Model 650. What, they asked, should it be called? Not the model itself, but rather the whole class of device it represented. An obvious option was calculateur, the literal French translation of ‘computer’. But IBM wanted something that conveyed more than arithmetic. ‘Dear Sir,’ Perret replied,

How about ordinateur? It is a correctly formed word, which is even found in Littré [the standard 19th-century French dictionary] as an adjective designating God who brings order to the world. A word of this kind has the advantage of easily supplying a verb, ordiner … (My translation.)

Besides, Perret added, the implicitly feminine connotation already present in IBM’s marketing materials could carry over to the new term:

Re-reading the brochures you gave me, I see that several of your devices are designated by female agent names (trieuse, tabulatrice). Ordinatrice would be perfectly possible … My preference would be to go for l’ordinatrice electronique.

The female reference was not entirely inappropriate. Up until the mid-20th century, the term ‘computer’ meant an office clerk, usually a woman, performing calculations by hand, or with the help of a mechanical device. IBM’s new machine, however, was intended for general information-processing. The masculine and godlike version prevailed. The term soon entered common language. Every computer in France became known as an ordinateur.

The sovereign individual and the paradox of the digital age | Aeon Essays

Data has created a new and paradoxical social order: the promise of emancipation is made possible by classifying everything

Aeon (aeon.co)

Is my reading comprehension just that bad? I cannot understand how the title and article are related

Because of this transformation, our sense of who we are is assembled in a strange and tangled fashion. The machinery of ordinalisation attends carefully to individuals rather than coarse classes or groups. By doing so, it appears to liberate people from the constraints of social affiliations and to judge them for their distinctive qualities and contributions. It promises incorporation for the excluded, recognition for the creative, and just rewards for the entrepreneurial. And yet this emancipatory promise is delivered through systems that classify, sort and, above all, rank people with ever-greater precision and on a previously unimaginable scale. The resulting social order is a sort of paradox, characterised by constant tensions between personal freedom and social control, between the subjective elan of inner authenticity and the objective forces of external authentication. It gives rise to a certain way of being, a new kind of self, whose experiences are defined by the push for personal autonomy and the pull of platform dependency.

Sounds like their point is we were emancipated from being defined by our social connections and place in society. This is being done by data identifying our intrinsic properties that exist without our social connections.

This is in line with the west’s (North American) ever increasing individualism. A trend that many suggest has gone too far, and is harming individuals, along with the rest of society.

“Don’t just go with the flow in your community and family! Each and everyone of you have the potential for more! Break free! Buy our product, and show everyone who you really are!”

This is just my take on your question.