> we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers.
Well, you're not. However:
Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology.
suggest that a good number of these "early database workers" were working directly with Hollerith codes on human flesh and tasked with the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime, along with military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.
You might argue they are no more responsible for concentration camps than concentration camp guards, but these are the people punching holes in cards and filtering them with knitting needles while looking out the window at piles of shoes and gold teeth to tabulate.
With different executives, that might not have happened. With different tabulators I don't think anything would have changed. You're not really disproving my point by emphasizing that the end operators of these machines were typically Nazis.
Well, you're not. However:
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaustsuggest that a good number of these "early database workers" were working directly with Hollerith codes on human flesh and tasked with the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime, along with military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.
You might argue they are no more responsible for concentration camps than concentration camp guards, but these are the people punching holes in cards and filtering them with knitting needles while looking out the window at piles of shoes and gold teeth to tabulate.