Politics : Edinburgh computer scientists banned from using ‘Alice and Bob’ as too ‘Western’

https://archive.is/eVYLj

The names Alice and Bob should not be used, computer science lecturers have been told, in the latest decolonisation drive at the University of Edinburgh.

The top-flight Russell Group university’s school of informatics claims there are “problematic issues related to computing terminology”.

Staff should “avoid using predominantly Western names such as Alice/Bob, as is common in the computer security literature”, according to internal documents seen by The Telegraph.

In cryptography and digital culture, Alice and Bob are a fictional couple widely used as placeholders to illustrate how protocols and systems work.

The terms “master/slave” to represent computing agents are also being discouraged in the faculty’s courses, with staff urged to “instead use coordinator or workers”.

Why is the West doing this to itself?

It's about damn time.

We're now falling asleep into wokeness. ¿DID YOU KNOW THAT CAPITAL LETTERS ARE NOW RACIST? Hope I didn't offend any capital criminals. They tend not to be white.

Some techie tightened up on the subject length since you posted. Too much, I believe.

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¿DID YOU KNOW THAT CAPITAL LETTERS ARE NOW RACIST?

Yeah, I saw that.

we join leaders like e. e. cummings, bell hooks, and peter kulchyski, who reject the symbols of hierarchy wherever they are found and do not use capital letters except to acknowledge the Indigenous struggle for recognition.

we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize.

https://www.mtroyal.ca/AboutMountRoyal/MediaRoom/Perspectives/2021/08/lower-case-as-indigenous-eventing-support-resistance.htm

That movement must have started as a parody of anarchism that humorless people took seriously.