Computer and electrical engineers should stop naming things “slave” and “master”

It is a constant refrain in design textbooks, in electrical and computer engineering and computer science textbooks, that one device in a system of multiple devices, is called "master" and the other devices are called "slaves".

A common example is the old IDE 40 pin PATA hard disk interface of the 90s, where every disk on the cable would be selected by a small connector known as a jumper, as either Master or Slave.

Another example is where one device somehow directs or triggers activity of other devices, it is called the master and they are called slaves.

This is completely strange in the year 2020, as it is anthropomorphizing a piece of technology for no apparent reason and using terminology that doesn't really convey a meaningful abstraction. It is a vague term that is applied inconsistently between different technologies with no actual technical definition or meaning.

The idea that slave is descriptive makes no sense - the master devices do not go around buying and selling slave devices to each other, nor do they capture the slave devices in warfare or battle, nor do they refuse to pay slave devices nor do they prohibit slave devices from escaping. On no level other than "object X tells object Y what to do" is this a master/slave relationship. And often the 'master' device doesn't actually tell the 'slave' device what to do, the programmer or designer just chose those names because they felt like it that day.

There are dozens of alternatives that could be used. It doesn't take much imagination. Manager/Worker for example. Dispatcher/runner. Get a thesaurus out and go to town. Especially in a world where programmers and designers will literally call their creations anything, from two letter abbreviations to 10 letter monstrosities with no vowels and on and on.

This is the type of subtle cultural bias that promotes systemic racism. It is one more brick that should be torn down.