Mickey's Blog: PC isn't short for Personal Computer

A little about myself.
I am an IT technician, participate in many projects, some HTML work, and reading a lot. I also contribute articles to IT magazines about Open Source Software as a core member of Japan Apache Users Group. I've been in computer related fields from 1978. starting in college, nuclear physics major, I had to take a class in FORTRAN and that was it, I was hooked on the machines. I started working first as an application programmar at a system development company. Then moved on to a system integration company, and specializing in data communication, small & mid size systems. I run a small intranet at home, a router, Windows Servers, Windows Desktops and CentOS Linux . The Linux runs DNS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and POP3 making it nice for software testing and development.

Monday, February 23, 2009

PC isn't short for Personal Computer

"PC" is interesting term. This PC isn’t Personal Computer; this is short for "Politically Correct". For example, you must not call black people Negro in public because it's very offensive term for them. How about Black? It is not very bad, but not correct. The best way is to call them African American. Yes, this expression is PC, not include racial, sex or religious discrimination.

"Policeman" include sex discrimination because policeman in not only man but also a woman. "Fireman" is the same. You'd better to call them "police officer" and "firefighter".

One of my American friends has Japanese mother and American father, and he call himself “half Jap”. "Jap" is a very very offensive term for Japanese. But nowadays some people don’t feel so unacceptable. But some, especially aged Japanese American people, it feels very bad.

PC is very difficult.