Author: The Conversation

FTC lawsuit spotlights a major privacy risk: From call records to sensors, your phone reveals more about you than you think Where you’ve been and who you’ve interacted with are not difficult for governments and corporations to find out. Maskot via Getty Images Susan Landau, Tufts University The Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Kochava Inc. on Aug. 29, 2022, accusing the data broker of selling geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices. Consumers are often unaware that their location data is being sold and that their past movements can be tracked, according to the commission. The FTC’s suit…

A professional, efficient and effective public service is key to a government’s ability to deliver on its mandate. That’s why South Africa’s constitution requires that the public service be institutionalised as a profession. Appointments must be based on merit and public servants are supposed to be honest, neutral and fair. Such a public service is a distinctive feature of modern democracy. It means the government bureaucracy is not tied to an incumbent political party. It remains in place no matter which party is in power, and is non-partisan. Administration can continue when political power changes hands. A professional public service…

Globally, men are twice as likely as women to start a business. Most research into how to start a business has been focused on men. Not much has looked at why women are not fully represented among entrepreneurs or how to change this. Yet it’s known that women entrepreneurs play an important role as leaders of entrepreneurial teams who contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. Research shows that women in South Africa are less likely to consider starting a business than men. They are also significantly less likely to act on their entrepreneurial intentions. One reason could be the…

Social media platforms have had some bad press in recent times, largely prompted by the vast extent of their data collection. Now Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has upped the ante. Not content with following every move you make on its apps, Meta has reportedly devised a way to also know everything you do in external websites accessed through its apps. Why is it going to such lengths? And is there a way to avoid this surveillance? ‘Injecting’ code to follow you Meta has a custom in-app browser that operates on Facebook, Instagram and any website you…

South Africa’s international relations department published a document on 1 August setting out the country’s new foreign policy. The outline of South Africa’s national interests is an important paper that sets out how the country will relate to the rest of the world for some time to come. The title of the document is: Framework on South Africa’s National Interest and its Advancement in a Global Environment. Governments are often cautious, for various reasons, about communicating their national interests. This is a first effort by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation to contextualise South Africa’s national interests. But the…

Nattie’s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first “C” would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned “Clem” was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie “lived, as it were, in two worlds” – the world of office tedium and an online world where “she did not lack social intercourse.” Texting drew them closer: “annoyances became lighter because she told him, and he sympathized.” Nattie soon realized “she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend ‘so near and yet so far’.” Their blossoming relationship almost failed…

Technological changes in industry have given rise to contending schools of thought about their impact on work and workers. Automation is rapidly deepening and widening, reaching new areas of work. What’s being produced is also changing. In the automotive manufacturing industry, for example, there is a global shift to vehicles that don’t produce emissions. The ongoing industrial revolution is defined by new work methods, ways of organising production, and advances in technology. At the one extreme is the view that this is the end of work. This argues that the technological changes will lead to mass unemployment through retrenchments. At…

Plastic pollution is a growing global menace. Between 2010 and 2020, the global production of plastics increased from 270 million tonnes to 367 million tonnes. Every year, more than 12 million tonnes of plastics end up in the world’s oceans, with severe consequences for marine life. When macro plastics degrade into micro-plastics, they easily contaminate the food chain and pose significant threats to human health via inhalation and ingestion. By 2030, plastic waste is expected to double to 165 million tonnes in African countries. Most of this will be in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. A significant…

South Africa is a dominantly urban country, with almost 70% of the population living in cities and towns. But urban services and infrastructures are coming under increasing strain from the collapse of infrastructure in many smaller and medium sized towns and deteriorating levels in the large cities. A common response to a gathering urban crisis is to imagine starting afresh with new cities. The impulse crosses the political spectrum. In his 2019 state of the nation address, President Cyril Ramaphosa envisioned the construction of a new smart city. He has since announced new cities at Lanseria (north of Johannesburg), Mooikloof…

The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is a term coined in 2016 by German economist Klaus Schwab. It’s used to describe the technology revolution that the world is going through. But there is growing criticism, particularly in the global south, of how it’s framed. Many are questioning whether it should be considered a revolution at all. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, according to one view, is a very simplistic narrative that advances a distinct political agenda. It is a kind of exploitation that is being sold as progress. The narrative is being advanced to achieve a specific economic outcome – at the expense…