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.
