This is so painfully bullshit. Imagine the scientists and engineers at bell labs thinking that the operators of their machines are akin to drug addicts.
The common quip is from the mid 90s, usually attributed to Edward Tufte but apparently the real source is "a guy from Wired":
> And o there is this incredible remark which a guy from Wired told me, that there are only two industries which refer to their customers as users, drugs and computers. "I've just got to have release 7.2", right!
> And o there is this incredible remark which a guy from Wired told me, that there are only two industries which refer to their customers as users, drugs and computers. "I've just got to have release 7.2", right!
[0] https://cryptome.org/jya/tufte.htm