HACkers blog

An interesting point has emerged in the listserv discussion on Affirmative Action / Equity / Diversity, which sets out the opposition of redress and diversity. Appointing black people as redress is argued to be "the right thing to do", while appointing black people to achieve diversity is seen as instrumental, of benefit to the University and thus of questionable morality per se. Which, sadly, drags me back to my original opposition of the Liberal and Neoliberal discourses.

Embracing the appointment of black people "because it's the right thing to do" harkens back to the Liberal discourse; the instrumental embracing of the appointment of black people to attain diversity harkens to the Neoliberal discourse.

In the context of this "debate" at UCT, the Liberal position - argued by David Benatar in the original Great Debate - has been cast as conservative, reactionary, even racist (through denying the validity of "race" as a continued meaningful construct); the Neoliberal position - argued by Martin Hall in that encounter - has been cast as progressive, revolutionary, anti-racist (through the reframing of the concept of "race").

Now, as fellow survivors of undergraduate Philosophy will know, there is nothing inherently contradictory about the concepts of liberalism and conservatism; or of neoliberalism and progressivism - it all depends on what one wishes to conserve, and whither one wishes to transform. A Liberal would indeed be conservative when faced with the threat to values s/he held dear: values not unlike those on our own Statement of Values. A Neoliberal, similarly, would harness massive progressive energy in pursuit of a transformation towards a marketised environment. Which position is to the Left, and which to the Right, of each other, relatively speaking?

Of course, in the South African context, we have multiple dimensions overlaying each other, and a purely class analysis, just like a purely "race"-based analysis, or a purely any single facet-based analysis, is bound to be simplistic and lacking the nuance to describe our situation most appropriately - hence the horror of those who still value intellectual rigour at the careless bandying about of inappropriate and lazy terms to dismiss the argument of the Other Side.

Henri's point is a useful one to focus our minds on why it is we're doing what we're doing, and what we hope to achieve as a result of that.

Some people might have noticed that comments are no longer invited on some of the posts on my blogs, and might be wondering why. It's not an attempt to curtail discussion or discourage interaction, merely an attempt to limit the impact of the spambots. How much phentermine spam can a person handle, ffs?!?

Currently, all posts from 2005 and 2006 have had comments disabled, and the window for comments in 2007 is three months. Too long? Too short? Time will tell - for now, having waded through in excess of 200 posts per blog to edit and disable comments, prune all the spam and retweak settings (Topics with punctuation get lost when edited...) I've run out of energy so will leave it there. Depending on the spam bot response, I may revisit and change settings.

If you feel outraged, censored or silenced, I urge you never to buy phentermine or cialis or anatrim to exact your revenge on the spam bots and their evil masters.

And feel free to post your comments on later, current posts. Discussion is welcomed, opinions encouraged and indifference feared!

Perhaps my sense of perspective is irreparably broken.

Aside from the irony inherent in the signer-off of the insulting PASS poster - who initially defended the poster and trivialised objections to it - coming out as the Defender of Dignity of the subordinate estate, a number of interesting dynamics seem to be at play here.

On an obvious level, perhaps, yet another impertinent PASSperson being smacked down for voicing an opinion on a listserv; or perhaps it was the use of humour in the context of a Deadly Serious Topic that was being chastised. Either way, I was rather more distubed at two other dynamics I read in that post.

The first, which asked about the "disrespect for professional and administrative staff that [the poster to whom the reply was addressed] also complain[s] about" implied that individuals within a system cannot be separated from the system within which they find themselves. On the planet whence I hail, it is perfectly conceivable to hold individuals, and even the work they do, in respect, while being critical of the system within which they are located. In fact, it is even conceivable for those same individuals, while working to high standards of diligence and professionalism, to be critical themselves of the system. Judgment and discretion are defining characteristics of professionals, after all. I'd even go so far as to say that failing to disaggregate the individuals from the system is disrespectful, and denies them discretion and agency - a view which may in its turn attract censure.

The second dynamic which disturbed me appeared in the question: "Are these the 'functionaries' that David Benatar talked about?" This apparent attempt to corral together all dissenting voices reminded me worryingly of the attempts back in - was it '84? - by the apartheid government to group together all opposition to its planned tricameral parliament, be it far-far-far Right or Left in origin, so as to dismiss it more easily. This ultimately backfired as the process spawned the formation of the United Democratic Front, the mobilisation of grassroots organisations and the galvanising of hitherto fragmented resistance into a significant political force. I hope the same strategic error is not at play here.

At the recent HIV/AIDS candlelight memorial, the figure was cited that one in ten of our students are likely to be HIV+. One in ten? In this safe, conservative piece of the country with the lowest HIV incidence?

I asked Sean about the figure, and he said it was a "guesstimate", but his explanation of it sounded credible.

Sitting in the computer lab on Friday - the only internet connectivity in the building - I glanced around at the hundred-plus students present. About a dozen of them, by Sean's projection, would be HIV+. Did they know? Did their friends know, their family, their loved ones? Did their course convenors know, their tutors, seminar leaders? Was the doctor's note accompanying a late assignment for "gastro" the result of a late night partying, or the sign of something more sinister?

I couldn't help wondering what the comparable rate was among staff, too. Less, I would imagine - particularly among academics who reproduce by binary fission or cloning... but somewhere, among us, may be colleagues who, like our students, feel that they just can't disclose.

And in contributing to that culture of silence, each day, we fail them.

Earlier this week I was invited, separately, to join two Facebook groups searching for Madeleine McCann. Madeleine McCann is a little British girl, who disappeared in Portugal. I am South African, located in Cape Town, with no plans to visit Portugal in the foreseeable future. Why I should be recruited - by other Cape Town-based South Africans, to find a missing child in Europe puzzles me. Especially when there are so many local children missing, that I'm not being enlisted to help find.

Online, a search for Madeleine McCann yields 1 630 000 hits. A search for Matthew Ohlsson - a mere 63, of which not even all are the missing Matthew Ohlsson.

Perhaps the worldwide media hysteria fanned by the wealth of Madeleine's parents benefits other missing children too, but I suspect that once Madeleine is found - dead or alive - much of that attention will revert to where it was before, and the chances of Matthew Ohlsson - or any of our other missing children - being found as a result of the renewed energy and focus will be minimal.

Communication is something we do very badly. We have climate surveys to tell us we do this very badly because, given how poorly we communicate, we can't tell ourselves and each other this directly.

Mostly communication is of the "not enough" variety. Almost everyone has a litany of how they don't receive the information they require to perform well in their jobs - sometimes because the information is intentionally withheld, but more often because those who have it simply don't know who requires it, for what, and by when, and so fail to pass it on timeously (or at all).

Other communication is of the "just plain wrong" variety. Either missing the point or undermining its own objectives, this kind of communication can be toe-curlingly cringeworthy. In recent memory we had the VC email which garnered massive support for the strike action, and the notorious poster campaign. This kind of communication disaster is relatively rare, even if its impacts are felt as severe at the time.

More insidious but equally invidious is communication of the "enough, already!" kind. Mass mailings - whether manilla envelopes from Bremner or emails sent to listservs - are the most common offenders. Sometimes it's an attempt to avoid the "not enough"pitfall, but more commonly it's a mix of laziness and the absence of nuanced enough tools. In order to reach the 130 people who need to know, collateral damage is inflicted on 327 innocent bystanders who happen to subscribe to the same listserv. It's deemed relatively harmless - "if it's not relevant, they'll simply delete it" - which shows a paucity of understanding of how attention works, and undermines the effectiveness of future communication. Our inbuilt spam filters kick in, and future mailings - however relevant - become the latest instance of the "cry wolf" ending. We stop listening, and so don't hear.

Last week, on a single day I was off sick, I received no fewer than six identical invitations (via various lists) to some or other lecture or seminar or something - without even the polite "apologies for cross-posting" that netiquette usually dictates in instances where this has been deliberately employed as a strategy. Fortunately my mailer threads mail, so it was all stacked into two neat threads (the headers on one of the invitations was different, so it earned itself a different thread). There was thus less to ignore, but as I happily recycled the electrons I wondered about those users of lesser mailers who received six bulky messages clogging up their limited mail space, whose spam filters were anyway less efficient, and whose frustration levels were no doubt cranked just that little bit higher as a result.

Attention is a scarce resource. We've learned to work sparingly with electricity, and water restrictions have focused our use of that, too. Yet we think little of conscripting vast armies of electrons and sending them off to die needlessly in mailboxes on the other end of listserves, detonating weapons of mass destruction in the precarious attention reserves of the recipients.

Of the hundreds of recipients each struck by six such missiles, I wonder how many actually attended whatever it was we were being invited to attend. And how many others, sequestered far from the battlefields, wished they'd beein informed so that they, too, could attend...

The results of the latest IT Salary Survey hit my desk this morning. Most respondents were male (82%), white (65%) and below the age of 30 (28%), conforming to the stereotype.

Best paid jobs, based on median salary, were reported as:

• Enterprise architect (R38 717)
• Software architect (R37 527)
• Data warehouse manager (R36 169)
• Project manager (R36 103)
• Business development manager (R35 019)

Not too many of those around here....

On the worst paid side were reported:

• Helpdesk specialist (R9 583)
• Technician (R9 667)
• Call centre specialist (R10 458)
• Web designer / developer (R12 000)
• Network administrator (R12 405)

Hmmm - rather more of those!

On the middle management side, they reported:

• IT manager (median R29 167, max R80 000)
• Project manager (median R31 667, max R100 000)
• e-Learning / training manager (median R20 833, max R41 200)
• Network manager (median R25 100, max R62 500)
• Helpdesk / support manager (median R21 000, max R60 000)
• Call centre technical manager (median R24 500, max R46 000)

Done comparing?

Then you'll not be surprised to learn that Education, as a sector employing IT types, clocked in at 4th worst, with a median reported at R17 083 (above Business services / consulting (non-ICT related); Other (non-ICT related); and Legal). IT types do better, financially, even in the notoriously cash-strapped bleeding heart sector, with NGOs reporting a median salary of R17 708.

If you want to follow the money, head for the Finance sector, with a median salary of R29 583, followed by Manufacturing, Telecomms or ICT distribution.

Right - now that you're thoroughly depressed (or, if you're on the Helpdesk, affirmed and valued) - stop wasting the University's time reading this blog, and get back to what you're paid so generously to do....

"Sparked in part by the strike by professional and administrative staff earlier this year, UCT's new Respect Campaign strives to instil a culture of respect for people and opinions" - Monday Paper

The point has been made elsewhere that the "culture of respect for people and opinions" striven for has been undermined by the recent poster campaign, but perhaps the ultimate irony lays in the specific relation of the campaign to the strike by the very sector dissed by the offensive poster in question.

Nor is it clear from the Monday Paper article whether the "inclusive learning and work environment" extends merely to those who are registered students or staff formally on the University's payroll, or those others who also work on this Campus but whose membership of the "University Community" is sometimes disputed.

If it includes the latter, could someone please explain how - despite the existence of a Code of Conduct which promises the defence of dignity - head cleaners still come to be referred to as "head girls" or "head boys" by their employers? I'd thought that the infantalising of black adults would have no place in a transforming institution.

Today is World Media Freedom Day, so why do I find myself self-censoring as I write this?

Perhaps I'm still feeling bruised from an exchange where I was accused of "wounding those who worked so hard" because I'd dared to voice anger at posters I'd found offensive (the ones declaring "PASS = sheltered employment at UCT"). Was my taking offence peculiar? Not at all, if the large number of emailed responses which flooded my inbox are to be believed. Many colleagues, academic and other, shared my view. But, for their own reasons, they chose to respond offline, to remain below the radar - something I found myself doing too, recently, for reasons on which I'm still not altogether clear.

Jonathan and Sean have posted recently about the culture of silence and fear at UCT, and I find myself slowly being sucked into that too. At a University which proudly clothes itself in Freedoms, what happens when the voices of dissent die away? Will we have succeeded, or failed terminally?