2008

I’ve often heard it said by those who’ve had to manage geeks (or want to have positive interactions with them) that they find that geeks have little respect for those outside their field — in particular for management and for those that perform non-technical work like administration (e.g. accountants and office managers) and user support. […]

This week I managed to get Mark Forrester on to Let’s Talk. I am chuffed that I was able to talk to Mark about his design work, company and what it is that he really does. What exactly do you do Mark? Good question, I was trying to work that out the other day when […]

I have had the pleasure of spending some time on the VeloCITI business incubation programme with Brett Simpson of Breadbin Interactive, one of the entrepreneurs going through the paces of taking a technology-focused business to the greater South African market. The product of interest is called the Freedom Toaster, first conceived by the Shuttleworth Foundation’s […]

Somebody told me a while ago that there are now a million South Africans living in Australia, and a similar number in the UK. I guess between Canada, the US and elsewhere, there must be at least half that same number again out there looking for a better life. Or having found it already. I […]

Leonard Shlain has done it again: in a probing and wide-ranging study, Sex, Time and Power (2003) — which probes even deeper into the origins of patriarchy than his earlier The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (1998) — he sets out to answer the question he had posed to a medical doctor (instructor) during his medical […]

After watching Padraig Harrington win his second consecutive Open Championship this past weekend, it prompted me to question why none of the younger golfers are coming through to step up and fight in the major championships. At 32 years old, Tiger Woods has been holding a monopoly on the game for the past 11 years […]

As suggested in Elhanan Helpman’s Mystery of Economic Growth, there are many tasks that rest on the shoulders of a (developmental) state. The same line of thinking can be discerned also in Jeffery Sach’s End of Poverty. In our context, for example, it is incontrovertible that the state, or its main agent (that is, the […]

The traditional religions of most Africans altered significantly as a result of colonial rule. Colonial rulers interfered with the African way of worship. Where the modes of worship conflicted with those of the colonialists, restrictions were placed on religious practice. African cultures were seen as primitive and were gradually impoverished through neglect and suppression by […]