Author: The Conversation

Have you had the experience of looking at some product online and then seeing ads for it all over your social media feed? Far from coincidence, these instances of eerily accurate advertising provide glimpses into the behind-the-scenes mechanisms that feed an item you search for on Google, “like” on social media or come across while browsing into custom advertising on social media. Those mechanisms are increasingly being used for more nefarious purposes than aggressive advertising. The threat is in how this targeted advertising interacts with today’s extremely divisive political landscape. As a social media researcher, I see how people seeking…

Since the dying days of apartheid in the mid-1990s, and at several pivotal moments since, South Africans have yearned for some measure of accountability for the ravages of apartheid. After all, the end of a system declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations had to yield an inevitable reckoning and accountability, especially for its victims. The first opportunity for accountability for apartheid crimes in democratic South Africa came with the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), released in 1998 and 2003. The universal expectation was that those denied amnesty at the commission for apartheid-era atrocities, or…

The metaverse is coming. Like all technological innovation, it brings new opportunities and new risks. The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others, and can move more or less freely from one virtual environment to another. It can also involve augmented reality, a blending of virtual and physical realities, both by representing people and objects from the physical world in the virtual and conversely by bringing the virtual into people’s perceptions of physical spaces. By donning virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses,…

Every disaster movie seems to open with a scientist being ignored. “Don’t Look Up” is no exception – in fact, people ignoring or flat out denying scientific evidence is the point. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who make a literally Earth-shattering discovery and then try to persuade the president to take action to save humanity. It’s a satire that explores how individuals, scientists, the media and politicians respond when faced with scientific facts that are uncomfortable, threatening and inconvenient. The movie is an allegory for climate change, showing how those with the power to do something about global…

Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your passwords too? We all know the habits to avoid, yet so many of us do them anyway: using predictable passwords, never changing them, or writing them on sticky notes on our monitor. We routinely ignore the recommendations for good passwords in the name of convenience. What’s wrong with your pa$$w0rd? Choosing short passwords containing common names or words is likely to lead to trouble. Hackers can often guess a person’s passwords simply by using a computer to…

With Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections about to hit theatres, we’re going to see a lot of criticism interpreting siblings Lana and Lilly Wachowskis’ body of films through a trans lens. I’m really looking forward to it: it’s a great opportunity for trans critics, and there are so few Hollywood movies – or pop culture in general – with openly trans creators for us to talk about. Lilly Wachowski, quoted in the excellent Cael M. Keegan text The Wachowskis: Sensing Transgender, once said: “There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana’s and my work through the lens of our…

Log4Shell, an internet vulnerability that affects millions of computers, involves an obscure but nearly ubiquitous piece of software, Log4j. The software is used to record all manner of activities that go on under the hood in a wide range of computer systems. Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, called Log4Shell the most serious vulnerability she’s seen in her career. There have already been hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of attempts to exploit the vulnerability. So what is this humble piece of internet infrastructure, how can hackers exploit it and what kind of mayhem could ensue?…

It is not surprising that many of us have been suffering from digital overload during the pandemic, and taking care of our “digital wellbeing” has become a common theme. Social media, online shopping, making reservations, and even necessary chores like paying bills have meant that technology has pervaded every aspect of our lives. Whether home schooling or working from home, our mobile phones have never been far from our side. We’ve even embraced video communication technology for keeping in touch with friends and loved ones, whether they live locally or thousands of miles away. To be frank, it can be…

Artificial intelligence (AI) was once the stuff of science fiction. But it’s becoming widespread. It is used in mobile phone technology and motor vehicles. It powers tools for agriculture and healthcare. But concerns have emerged about the accountability of AI and related technologies like machine learning. In December 2020 a computer scientist, Timnit Gebru, was fired from Google’s Ethical AI team. She had previously raised the alarm about the social effects of bias in AI technologies. For instance, in a 2018 paper Gebru and another researcher, Joy Buolamwini, had showed how facial recognition software was less accurate in identifying women…

It comes as no surprise that children are spending more time watching screens as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and caregivers in many parts of the world – including South Africa, where I have done research on children’s healthy behaviours – have had a hard time managing their children’s screen time in these last two years. Juggling working-from-home commitments, online educational activities, economic challenges, and illness and grief have been realities, to varying extents, across most households. Screen time can offer a welcome relief when it has all become too difficult to manage. Global studies have found that…