Yeah, I’m super-serious and not full of much levity today. Maybe it’s because I’m thoroughly engaged in this book — “IBM and the Holocaust“.
Before anyone goes postal about a person who works for an IBM competitor posting about this book to his blog, I view it not so much as an indictment of IBM as they exist today, but a cautionary tale for technologists.
I started reading the book a few weeks ago, but took a break from it because life intervened — and it is the type of book where I wanted to dedicate my full attention to it. It’s extremely detailed, but reads like a narrative, not a dry, boring recounting of historical data. The author does repeat himself at times, but he definitely finds an interesting parallel in the cult of personality centered on Thomas Watson at IBM and the charismatic appeal of Hitler to Nazi Germany during the mid-30’s. The fact that a unrepentant capitalist like Watson would knowingly supply Hitler with the technology to identify, manage, and exterminate Jews while maintaining an audit trail based solely on punch-card machines, which no doubt sound incredibly primitive by today’s computing standards.
Definitely food for thought, and definitely a book that fellow geeks should read to get a bit of perspective. If you’re curious about the book, click here for an excerpt.