Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/25/nasa-renames-dc-headquarters-a.html
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Don’t call her a “human computer”. That lessens her because it describes her in comparison with a machine. It reads like she was just an organic adjunct to a machine. It debases the word “human” by making it just a specification to identify a particular type of machine. Mary Jackson was a computer. Her job description was “computer”, as in someone who computes. The word “computer” was once widely understood as a word for a human who did a particular type of work. It came to be applied to machines because the machines did what a human was doing. The original machines that we now call computers were at first called “computing machines”. They came to be called computers only when the human jobs they took were phased out. Calling Mary Jackson a “human computer” is a misunderstanding of history and a slighting of her humanity.
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I didn’t, which is why it is in quotes.
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The fact is the current term “accountant” is firmly in the financial field rather in the scientific field.
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This is an awesome development–overdue–but awesome nonetheless!
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Perceptions here may not be uniform; I don’t read it that way.
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That was her job.
It is not, actually. It’s an accurate description of her job. when words change meaning in the present, it’s still accurate to use the term when applying it to the past.
But it’s historically accurate, though. She was a computer because she did computations.
Also, Rob, your eyebrows need a hair cut… time to get out to the eyebrow barber… 
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Could they rename the FBI Headquarters building (from “J Edgar Hoover”)? Is it possible? (Well, not currently, because it would require congressional approval. Good luck with that.) However, the interesting thing about the FBI’s long-planned move to a new headquarters building is that Hoover’s name does not convey automatically.
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Yeah. She wasn’t named after a machine- machines were named after her and people like her.
How hard is that to understand?
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This strikes as a great reason why we need to teach not just events in the past, but historical thinking, because it helps us to understand how things can and do change. This includes words, that evolve meaning with changing circumstances.
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How about “Mentat”, then?
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One could argue they should wait until the agency starts conducting itself in a way that deserves to be associated with an honorable American before renaming their headquarters after an honorable American.
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They called people that did computations ‘computers’ in the past.
When the atomic bomb project was happening they’d have circles of people doing computations and passing off one result to another person to plug in the outcome and pass it on to next ‘computer’.
https://www.lanl.gov/museum/discover/_docs/manhattan-project-computing.pdf
Still it was mostly considered “womens work”
I can recommend this book if you are interested in language and computing…
The computers in Turing’s seminal paper were people.
This is the only on-topic post.
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Yeah; privileged White men who are “revertible experts” on ‘practically everything’ discussing anything BUT the actual topic at hand - one of the phenomenal Black women who pioneering computing before electronic computers even existed finally getting some acknowledgment - is nothing new, sadly.
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why can’t they shut up…
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“Well actually,” we’re mistaken.
There is one other comment that’s on topic:
Kudos to that person.
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