We shouldn’t just copy all our concepts from the West and paste them for African consumption
media
Posted inBusiness
Financial journalism must be a watchdog
The role of the media is to serve the interests of the person in the street and not merely the elite or business
Posted inGeneral
The language telling the KwaSizabantu story
The complexity of the situation, with its multiple cross-cutting cultural and social circumstances, begs that we hear both sides
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Let’s end our dual heritage of resilience and predation
South Africa needs to address the systems that enable predators of all kinds to delay equity
Posted inEquality
Why is it still so hard for civil society to talk about internal racism?
Appointing Black women to leadership positions is a drop in the ocean of the real work that needs to be done to truly transform organisations, especially in the nonprofit world
Posted inMedia
Words can paint a softened impression of Covid-19’s onslaught
Reporting is blurry but, reading between the lines, it seems more people have died from the disease
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
The power of words to show how South Africa is fighting Covid-19
News headlines point to the ‘facts’ that citizens feel in charge of the virus
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General, Media, Tech
Metaphors (as models), and our own ‘networked’ existence
In The Prison-House of Language (Princeton University Press, 1972) Fredric Jameson opens the Preface with the following thought-provoking remark (p. v): The history of thought is the history of its models. Classical mechanics, the organism, natural selection, the atomic nucleus or electronic field, the computer: such are some of the objects or systems which, first […]
Posted inGender violence, General, Media, News/Politics, Tech
‘Dark technology’ and human ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’?
In the later 19th century there was a protracted debate among thinkers of various stripes about the question, what ultimately determines human actions — ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ — a debate that is still going on today. But while it was then influenced by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, on the one hand, and empiricist […]
Posted inGeneral, Health, Media, Tech
How (virtual) ‘speed’ has changed our way of life
Paul Virilio is a very important, if unusual, thinker. An architect and philosopher, his work has transformed the way people think about the relationship between speed (or acceleration), visuality (or visual culture), technology, the military, and the distinctive mode of existence of people in the early 21st century. This is how Virilio expresses the links […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media
Why does celebrity online behaviour affect ordinary people?
In a recent article on the Yahoo website, Marie Claire Dorking claims that when so-called celebrities – the contemporary kitsch counterparts of ancient Greek Olympians – ‘behave badly’ online, their behaviour has a recognisable impact on the behaviour of ordinary people, including children. In other words, the bad example they set has consequences when it […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, Tech
Technocratic culture: ‘Disconnect’
If you don’t like thinking for yourself, don’t read this post. If you prefer playing around on your mobile device or smartphone, don’t bother reading further. The phone is definitely smarter than you are if you have relinquished your own memory and thinking-ability to its functionality. But if you would like to know something more […]