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Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

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The blueprint for modern digital computing was codesigned by Charles Babbage, a vocal champion for the concerns of the emerging industrial capitalist class who condemned organized workers and viewed democracy and capitalism as incompatible. Histories of Babbage diverge sharply in their emphasis.

Britain officially abolished West Indian slavery in 1833, and Babbage was very aware of the debate on abolition. He was also aware of the questions that were roiling the British elite as they sought alternatives to enslaved Black labor—particularly the question of how to control white industrial workers who persistently rebelled against industrialization, such that they could produce at the pace required to maintain the British empire. Both Babbage’s influential labor theories and his engines can be read as attempts to answer these questions—ones that, knowingly or not, rearticulated technologies of control developed on the plantation.

https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/

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