Platform

Platform (pronounced plat-fawrm)

(1) A horizontal surface or structure raised above the surrounding area, used for appearances, performances etc (speeches, music, drama etc) and known also as a dais or podium if used for public speaking.

(2) A raised floor constructed for any purpose (an area for workers during construction, the mounting of weapons etc.

(3) The raised area (usually a constructed structure) between or alongside the tracks of a railroad station, designed to provide passenger or freight ingress & egress.

(4) The open entrance area, or vestibule, at the end of a railroad passenger car.

(5) A landing in a flight of stairs.

(6) A public statement of the principles, objectives, and policy (often referred to as “planks”, the metaphor being the timber planks used to build physical platforms) on the of a political party, especially as put forth by the representatives of the party in a convention to nominate candidates for an election; a body of principles on which a person or group takes a stand in appealing to the public; program; a set of principles; plan.

(7) Figuratively, a place or an opportunity to express one's opinion (historically also referred to as a tribune; a place for public discussion; a forum.

(8) Figuratively, something (a strategy, a campaign etc) which provides the basis on which some project or cause can advance (described also as a foundation or stage).

(9) A deck-like construction on which the drill rig of an offshore oil or gas well is erected.

(10) In naval architecture, a light deck, usually placed in a section of the hold or over the floor of the magazine (also used in to general nautical design).

(11) In structural engineering, a relatively flat member or construction for distributing weight, as a wall plate, grillage etc.

(12) In military jargon, solid ground on which artillery pieces are mounted or a metal stand or base attached to certain types of artillery pieces.

(13) In geology, a vast area of undisturbed sedimentary rocks which, together with a shield, constitutes a craton (often the product of wave erosion).

(14) In footwear design, a thick insert of leather, cork, or other sturdy material between the uppers and the sole of a shoe, usually intended for stylish effect or to give added height; technically an ellipsis of “platform shoe”, “platform boot” etc.

(15) In computing (as an ellipsis of “computing platform”, a certain combination of operating system or environment & hardware (with the software now usually functioning as a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to permit the use of non-identical equipment); essentially a standardized system which allows software from a variety of vendors seamlessly to operate.

(16) In internet use (especially of social media and originally as an ellipsis of “digital platform”), software system used to provide online and often multi-pronged interactive services.

(17) In manufacturing, a standardised design which permits variations to be produced without structural change to the base.

(18) In automotive manufacturing (as an ellipsis of “car platform”, a set of components able to be shared by several models (and sometimes shared even between manufacturers).  The notion of the platform evolved from the literal platforms (chassis) used to build the horse-drawn carriages of the pre-modern era.

(19) A plan, sketch, model, pattern, plan of action or conceptual description (obsolete).

(20) In Myanmar (Burma), the footpath or sidewalk.

1540–1550: From the Middle English platte forme (used also as plateforme), from the Middle French plateforme (a flat form), the construct being plate (flat) from the Old French plat, from the Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús) (flat) + forme (form) from the Latin fōrma (shape; figure; form).  It was related to flatscape which survived into modern English as a rare literary & poetic device and which begat the derogatory blandscape (a bland-looking landscape), encouraging the derived “dullscape”, “beigescape”, “shitscape” etc.  Platform & platforming are nouns & verbs, platformer & platformization are nouns, platformed is a verb; the noun plural is platforms.  The noun & adjective platformative and the noun & adverb platformativity are non-standard.

In English, the original sense was “plan of action, scheme, design” which by the 1550s was used to mean “ground-plan, drawing, sketch”, these uses long extinct and replaced by “plan”.  The sense of a “raised, level surface or place” was in use during the 1550s, used particularly of a “raised frame or structure with a level surface”.  In geography, by the early nineteenth century a platform was a “flat, level piece of ground”, distinguished for a “plateau” which was associated exclusively with natural elevated formations; geologists by mid-century standardized their technical definition (a vast area of undisturbed sedimentary rocks which, together with a shield, constitutes a craton (often the product of wave erosion).  The use in railroad station design meaning a “raised area (usually a constructed structure) between or alongside the tracks of a railroad station, designed to provide passenger or freight ingress & egress” dates from 1832.

Donald Trump on the platform, Butler, Pennsylvania, 13 July 2024.

For politicians, the platform can be a dangerous place and the death toll of those killed while on the hustings is not inconsiderable.  Since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), he and his running mate in the 2024 presidential election (JD  James (b 1984; US senator (Republican-Ohio) since 2023) speak behind bullet-proof glass, the threat from homicidal "childless cat ladies" apparently considered "plausible".

The familiar modern use in politics was a creation of US English meaning a “statement of political principles policies which will be adopted or implemented were the candidates of the party to secure a majority at the upcoming election” and appeared first in 1803.  The use would have been derived from the literal platform (ie “on the hustings”) on which politicians stood to address crowds although some etymologists suggest it may have been influenced by late sixteenth century use in England to describe a “set of rules governing church doctrine" (1570s).  During the nineteenth century, platform came to be used generally as a figurative device alluding to “the function of public speaking” and even for a while flourished as a verb (“to address the public as a speaker”).

Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots (Saint Laurent part number 532469), New York, March 2019.

On the internet, "cancelling" or "cancel culture" refers to the social (media) phenomenon in which institutions or individuals (either “public figures” or those transformed into a public figures by virtue of an incautious (in the case of decades-old statements sometimes something at the time uncontroversial) tweet or post are called publicly “shamed”, criticized, or boycotted for a behaviour, statement or action deemed to be offensive (problematic often the preferred term) or harmful.  Cancelling is now quite a thing and part of the culture wars but the practice is not knew, the verb deplatform (often as de-platform) used in UK university campus politics as early as 1974 in the sense of “attempt to block the right of an individual to speak at an event (usually on campus)”; the comparative noun & verb being “deplatforming”.  The unfortunate noun & verb “platforming” began in railway use in the sense of (1) the construction of platforms and (2) the movement of passengers or freight on a platform but in the early 2010s it gained a new meaning among video gamers who used it to describe the activity of “jumping from one platform to another.”  Worse still is “platformization” which refers to (1) the increasing domination of the internet by a number of large companies whose products function as markets for content and (2) also in internet use, the conversion of a once diverse system into a self-contained platform.  Software described as “cross-platform” or “platform agnostic” is able to run on various hardware and software combinations.

IBM: In 1983 things were looking good.

In computing, the term “platform” was in use long before “social media platforms” became part of the vernacular.  The significance of “platform” was compatibility, the rationale being that software sold by literally thousands of vendors could be run on machines produced by different companies, sometimes with quite significantly different hardware (the “bus wars” used to be a thing).  The compatibility was achieved was by an operating system (OS) creating was called the HAL (hardware abstraction layer), meaning that by a variety of techniques (most notably “device drivers”)’ an operating system could make disparate hardware manifest as “functionally identical” to application level software.  So, in a sign of the times, the once vital concept of “IBM compatibility” came to be supplanted by “Windows compatibility” and the assertion by in 1984 by NEC when releasing the not “wholly” compatible APC-III that “IBM compatibility is just a state of mind” was the last in its ilk; the APC-III architecture proving a one-off.  The classic computing platform became the “WinTel” (sometimes as “Wintel”, a portmanteau word, the construct being Win(dows) + (In)tel), the combination of the Microsoft Windows OS and the Intel central processing unit (CPU), an evolution traceable to IBM’s decision in 1980 to produce their original PC-1 with an open architecture using Microsoft’s DOS (disk operation system) and Intel’s 8088 (8/16 bit) & 8086 (16 bit) CPUs rather than use in-house products.  In the IBM boardroom, that at the time would have seemed a good idea but it was one which within a decade almost doomed the corporation as the vast ecosystem of “clone” PCs enriched Microsoft & Intel while cannibalizing the corporate market which had built IBM into a huge multi-national.  It is the Wintel platform which for more than forty years has underpinned the digital revolution and, like the steam engine, transformed the world.

The noun & adjective platformative and the noun & adverb platformativity are non-standard.  Platformative was built on the model of “performative” which (1) in structural linguistics and philosophy is used to mean “being enacted as it is said” (ie follows the script) and (2) in post-modernist deconstructionist theory refers to something done as a “performance” for purposes of “spectacle or to create an impression”.  “Platformative is understood as some sort of event or situation which is (1) dependent on the platform on which it is performed or (2) something which exists to emphasise the platform rather than itself.  Platformativity was built on the model of performativity which as a noun (1) in philosophy referred to the capacity of language and expressive actions to perform a type of being and (2) the quality of being performative.  As an adverb, it described something done “in a performative manner”.  The actual use of platformativity seems often mysterious but usually the idea is the extent to which the meaning of a “statement or act” (ie the text) is gained or changed depending upon the platform on which it transpired (something of a gloss on the idea “The medium is the message” which appeared in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).

The automotive platform

In automobile mass-production, the term “platform” tended to be generic until the post-war years and was used (if at all) interchangeably with “chassis” or “frame”, the basic underling structure used to mount the mechanical components and add the bodywork.  The growing adoption of “unitary” construction during the mid-century years radically changed the way cars were manufactured but didn’t much change the language, the underpinnings still often referred to as the “chassis” even though engineers cheerfully would point out one no longer existed.  What did change the language was sudden proliferation of models offered by the US industry in the 1960s; where once, each line (apart from the odd speciality) had a single model, emerging in the 1960s would be ranges consisting of the (1) full-size, (2) intermediate, (3) compact and (4) sub-compact.  The strange foreign cars were often so small they were often described variously as “micros” & “sub-micros”.  With such different sizes now being built, different platforms were required and these came to be known usually with titles like “A Platform”, “C Platform”, “E Platform” etc (although “A Body”, “C Body” etc were also used interchangeably).  Such nomenclature had actually been in use in Detroit as early as the 1920s but there was little public perception of the use which rarely appeared outside engineering departments or corporate boardrooms.  The concept of the platform was in a sense “engineering agnostic” because the various platforms could be unitary, with a traditional separate chassis or one of a variety of BoF (body-on-frame) constructions (X-Frame, Perimeter-Frame, Ladder-Frame etc).  Regardless, in the language of internal designation, anything could be a “platform”.

With the coming of the 1960s, the “platform” concept became the standard industry language, quickly picked up the motoring press which observed the most notable aspect of the concept was that the design of platforms emphasised the ability to be adapted to a number of different models, often with little more structural adjustment than a (quick & cheap) stretch of the wheelbase or a slightly wider track, both things able to be accommodated on the existing production line without the need to re-tool.  The designers of platforms needed to be cognizant not only of the vehicles which would be mounted atop but also production line rationalization.  What this implies is that the more models which could be produced using the single platform, all else being equal, the more profitable that platform tended to be and some of the long-running platforms proved great cash cows.  However, if a platform (1) proved more expensive to produce than the industry average and (2) was used only on a single or limited number of lines, it could be what Elon Musk (b 1971) would now call a “money furnace”.  Such a fate befell Chrysler’s “E Platform” (usually called the “E Body”), produced between 1969-1974 for two close to identical companion lines.  Exacerbating the E Platforms woes was it being released (1) just before its market segment suffered a precipitous decline in sales, (2) government mandated rules began to make it less desirable, (3) rising insurance costs limited the appeal of the most profitable models and (4) the first oil shock of 1973-1974 drove a final nail into the coffin.

1960 Ford Falcon (US, left) and 1976 Ford PC LTD (Australia, right).  Both built on the "Falcon Platform", the 1960 original was on a 109½ inch (2781 mm) wheelbase and fitted with a 144 cubic inch (2.4 litre) straight-six.  By 1973, Ford Australia had stretched the platform to a 121 inch (3100 mm) wheelbase and fitted a 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) (335 series "Cleveland") V8.      

Ford in North America introduced the Falcon in 1960 in response to the rising sales of smaller imports, a phenomenon the domestic industry had brought upon itself by making their own mainstream production bigger and heavier during the late 1950s and tellingly, when later they would introduce their “intermediate” ranges, these vehicles were about the size cars had been in 1955; they proved very popular although rising prosperity did mean sales of the full-size lines would remain buoyant until mugged by economic reality in a post oil-shock world.  The Falcon began modestly enough and while the early versions were very obviously built to a (low) price and intended to be a commodity to be disposed of when “used up”, it found a niche and Ford knew it was onto something.  The early platform wasn’t without its flaws, as Australian buyers would discover when they took their stylish new 1960 Falcon to the outback roads the frumpy but robust Holden handled without complaint, but it proved adaptable: In North America, the Falcon was produced between 1960-1969, it lasted from 1962-1991 in Argentina and in Australia, in a remarkable variety of forms, it was offered between 1960-2016.

On the Falcon platform: 1965 Mustang (6 cylinder, left) and 1969 Mustang Boss 429 (right).  In the vibrant market for early Mustangs, although it's the high-performance versions and Shelby American's derivatives which attract the collectors, massively out-selling such things were the so-called "grocery-getters", configured typically with small (in US terms) 6 cylinder engines and automatic transmissions.  The "grocery-getters" used to be known as "secretary's" or "librarian's" cars but such sexist stereotyping would now attract cancellation (once known as "de-platforming).

In North America however, the platform wasn’t retired when the last of the Falcons was sold in 1970 because it was used also for other larger Fords (and companion Mercury & even (somewhat improbably) Lincoln models) including the Fairlane (1962-1970), Maverick (1970–1977) & Granada 1975-1980.  Most famously of course, it was the Falcon platform which was the basis for the first generation Mustang (1964-1973); if the development costs for the Falcon hadn’t been amortized by the time the Mustang was released, the extraordinary popularity of the new “pony car” meant the profits were huge.  It’s of course misleading to suggest a machine like the 1969 Mustang Boss 429 (7.0 litre) was “underneath the body just a Falcon with a big engine” but the basic design is the same and between the early versions of the two, there are many interchangeable parts.  Later, Ford would maintain other long-lasting platforms.  The Fox platform would run between 1979-1993 (the SN95 platform (1994-2004) is sometimes called the “Fox/SN95” because it was “a Fox update" but it was so substantial most engineers list it separately) and the larger Panther platform enjoyed an even more impressive longevity; released in 1979, the final Panther wasn’t produced until 2012.