I can not begin to imagine how many facilities on this earth require a man, a laptop, and an ethernet cable. Jesus it must be _a lot_.
Ethernet isn't going anywhere. Serial ports haven't gone anywhere. I literally was in a factory 2 hours ago where they are manufacturing new, >$100,000 machines that have both serial and ethernet ports, both of which will remain standards for god knows how many decades.
We use USB dongles for the serial stuff now, but even that is not possible for some applications iirc.
I'm sorry but your ageism offends me. Are we just going to exclude teens and children? Can a 15 year old not operate a laptop? "Man" and "Woman" imply adults, and ageism is not okay.
Do you see how fast this type of cultural revolution bullshit goes downhill? Someone else can always be more sanctimonious.
I of course used "man" in place of "person" as has been common (and correct) for thousands of years. Man can mean "mankind" or "a person", and does not exclusively mean "male", and never has. Sort of like how "guys" now means "people".
In fact, "man" meant person before it meant "male", it literally predates the English language. It's so old it predates writing. It's one of the oldest words we have.
Given you talked about "facilities" I would assume that you were talking about a professional environment, so assuming an adult seems fine to me.
Whether man has been correct and standard usage in the past is fairly irrelevant. People's attitudes towards gender have changed (for the better), and so our view of what is 'good' and 'bad' in written English have changed too. Particularly in a male dominated industry where women don't feel welcome, using phrasing that implies a job is only done by men is fairly unfriendly to half the population. It's not hard to use "person" or "they" or other gender neutral language and eliminate this particular problem.
Language is a tool to express our thoughts. As our thoughts change, so does language. If you don't give a shit about women in technology (or anywhere else) then fine, but don't be surprised if people who do then call you on it.
The reason I was in that factory today is because the woman who runs the tech company I work for sent me there, lol.
But go ahead, explain to me what a chauvinist oppressor I am.
I don't think it is language that keeps women out of tech, and I don't think this flash in the pan cultural moment is going to change our habits on a word that is older than writing.
I can not begin to imagine how many facilities on this earth require a man, a laptop, and an ethernet cable. Jesus it must be _a lot_.
Ethernet isn't going anywhere. Serial ports haven't gone anywhere. I literally was in a factory 2 hours ago where they are manufacturing new, >$100,000 machines that have both serial and ethernet ports, both of which will remain standards for god knows how many decades.
We use USB dongles for the serial stuff now, but even that is not possible for some applications iirc.