Agency to end use of technology terms such as ‘master’ and ‘slave’ over racist associations by Eric Geller
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose publications form the basis for federal activities on everything from cybersecurity to time measurement, will stop using common computer security terms with racist connotations.
“We’ve identified a pretty extensive list of publications that have one or more uses of these terms, and we’re in the process of initiating updates to those,” Kevin Stine, the chief of NIST’s Applied Cybersecurity Division, said on Thursday during a meeting of the agency’s Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, or ISPAB.
Chuck Romine, director of the agency’s Information Technology Laboratory, first informed the board that it was reviewing the use of a number of terms on Wednesday.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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