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0 pointsiends12y ago0 comments

Really?

I wonder how many people's lives have been made better by technologies created, sold, and serviced by IBM.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

jp_sc12y ago· 3 in thread

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

(And by Goodwin's law corollaries I've lost this debate)

iendsOP12y ago

It's tragic that IBM built technology that helped enabled the death of large number of people. One thing the wikipedia page doesn't make clear was IBM aware of the atrocities? The article cites the 1933 census, but things in Germany didn't really heat up until Kristallnacht in 1938?

Anyway, the point was, things are not always black and white. IBM has certainly done some bad things, but it has also had a tremendous positive impact on society, medicine, techology, etc easily; more than 36m.

pessimizer12y ago

>The article cites the 1933 census, but things in Germany didn't really heat up until Kristallnacht in 1938?

"As the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of each subjugated nation, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Gypsies. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New York office following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg invasion."

throwawayaway12y ago

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/black.html From the author of the book of the same name.

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