Author: The Conversation

There is a widespread view that labour has become irrelevant as a force for change. The argument goes that the proliferation of digital labour platforms – and the rise in job insecurity this brings – means that worker resistance is increasingly futile. The problem with this pessimistic “end of labour thesis” is that it gives globalisation and the digital age a logic and coherence that they do not have. The result is the decentring of workplace struggles over the conditions of work and an obscuring of relations of exploitation. The outcome is that capital is let off the hook. We…

The US embassy in South Africa has twice raised the alarm recently about terrorism in the country. On 26 October it issued a security alert for a possible terror attack in Sandton, the financial centre of Johannesburg. Days later it blacklisted four individuals and eight companies as terrorist financiers for Islamic State (ISIS). This followed media reports, most notably by The Economist, showing that ISIS was using South Africa to add to its war chest. There is a long history of concerns about the country’s deficiencies in dealing with terrorism financing activities within its borders. More than 15 years ago,…

Elon Musk announced that “the bird is freed” when his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter officially closed on Oct. 27, 2022. Some users on the microblogging platform saw this as a reason to fly away. Over the course of the next 48 hours, I saw countless announcements on my Twitter feed from people either leaving the platform or making preparations to leave. The hashtags #GoodbyeTwitter, #TwitterMigration and #Mastodon were trending. The decentralized, open source social network Mastodon gained over 100,000 users in just a few days, according to a user counting bot. As an information scientist who studies online communities,…

South Africa’s 28-year-old, continuously transforming multiparty democracy was reminded of its own fragility when, in September, a coalition running its biggest city, Johannesburg, collapsed. The speaker and the mayor lost their jobs. A new coalition took office, only to be removed by a high court verdict three weeks later. This was followed by the ousting of the mayor of the adjoining metropole of Ekurhuleni. This isn’t the first time that the administration of a city has fallen apart due to coalition politics. Acrimonious scenes have played out across the country in metropoles such as Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane, large…

In the 2002 movie Minority Report (based on a short story by Philip K Dick), director Steven Spielberg imagined a future in which three psychics can “see” murders before they happen. Their clairvoyance allows Tom Cruise and his “Precrime” police force to avert nearly all potential homicides. Twenty years on, in the real world, scientists and law enforcement agencies are using data mining and machine learning to mimic those psychics. Such “predictive policing”, as it is called, is based on the fact that many crimes – and criminals – have detectable patterns. Predictive policing has enjoyed some successes. In a…

If an alien were to look at Earth, many human technologies – from cell towers to fluorescent light bulbs – could be a beacon signifying the presence of life. We are two astronomers who work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – or SETI. In our research, we try to characterize and detect signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. These are called technosignatures. While scanning the sky for a TV broadcast of some extraterrestrial Olympics may sound straightforward, searching for signs of distant, advanced civilizations is a much more nuanced and difficult task than it might seem. Saying ‘hello’…

South Africa’s major cities in the Gauteng Province – the country’s economic heartland – are experiencing major water shortages. In Johannesburg and Tshwane taps have run dry, with numerous areas experiencing intermittent supply while some areas have no water at all. The province has metropolitan areas – the City of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. All are affected. Rand Water, the water authority for the region, has imposed restrictions of 30%. This will be revisited when the system recovers. The last water shutdown was in November 2021 when Rand Water cut off water for 54 hours so that it could to…

Music is part of our lives in different ways. We listen to it on our commutes and it resounds through shopping centres. Some of us seek live music at concerts, festivals and shows or rely on music to set the tone and mood of our days. While we might understand the genres or songs we appreciate, it’s not clear precisely why a certain song is more appealing or popular. Perhaps the lyrics speak to an experience? Perhaps the energy makes it appealing? These questions are important to answer for music industry professionals, and analyzing data is a key part of…

When Facebook reinvented itself into Meta in October 2021, it was widely reported that Meta would be focusing on virtual reality (VR) by being at the forefront of the metaverse. But Meta has not given up on the world of bricks and mortar yet, as reflected by the company’s massive investment in augmented reality (AR) glasses. CNET explores the Meta Quest Pro. My research considers smart real estate and human-computer interactions in smart environments. Meta is only one among many companies betting that the future of physical space will involve merging with digital space, resulting in an augmentation of our…

Tobacco is a leading cause of disease. It is estimated that it kills half of its consumers. Over a million additional deaths result from exposure to second hand smoke. Countries around the world are moving towards stricter regulation of tobacco products in compliance with their obligation to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. In 2018 South Africa published a tobacco control bill that sought to better regulate the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. It’s been revised as the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill 2021 and has been approved for submission to…