Yes, they’re doing that too:
The department added that “computer science itself has been characterised as a colonial system, exporting technology designed for particular cultural and social contexts into other areas of the globe, without regard to local needs or contexts”.
Therefore, it says “there is an urgent need to work on decolonising digital innovation, digital content, and digital data to explore how databases and images might support indigenous knowledge systems”.
Sigh:
The faculty, one of the oldest computer sciences hubs in the UK, says there is “growing awareness” that “new technologies can have a detrimental effect on individuals, communities and entire societies”.
Yes, of course. That’s what they’re for these new technologies. Overturning the previous systems. Technological advance is that system of permanent revolution.
It’s like reverse-colonialism. Colonial powers exposed people to the ideas of modernity, development and progress; post-modern axe-grinders want to ensure they don’t develop. Maybe they’d be better off introducing cultures to the Amish, letting people make their own decisions and then leaving the rest of us the f#£& alone.
’…indigenous knowledge systems…’
‘You’ve tried Meta – now try the aboriginal Dreamtime!’
I wish these people could simply sail away over the edge of the world and leave me alone with the local needs and contexts they’ve attributed to me like the patronising colonists they are.
And where has this come from? You guessed it.
I always objected that Unix was invented by drug crazed hippies.
a colonial system, exporting technology designed for particular cultural and social contexts into other areas of the globe, without regard to local needs or contexts.
I reckon that you’d be hard-pushed to find a more addle-pated moronic comment. Computers are “machines” FFS, arguably the most flexible and adaptable machines that mankind/womankind/personkind/squirrelkind have ever invented – so why are they suddenly unable to access/process “other cultural and social contexts” unless these megabrains at Oxford are planning on developing an African/Caribbean version that only operates for a couple of hours a day.
All you have to know is that the head of department, Leslie Ann Goldberg, has never left academia. Written a lot of papers, done some research around algorithms, lots of which is just masturbators in academia hiring other masturbators. Most of her PhD students are professors of Computer Science, so it’s just becoming a human centipede.
These people can teach you nothing more than a dozen books costing about £200 can teach you, and a lot of that is worthless theory today. You will be taught about the fetch-execute cycle, or disk organisation, or calculating how efficient an algorithm is, and for 95+% of jobs in software this is just wanking. Nearly everyone is working in abstracted environment where you don’t know and frankly don’t care.
If you stay in your ex-colony you can usually avoid encroaching colonialist technology.
Sadly, my alma mater has never been at the cutting edge of Computer Science. I wonder why?
I agree, computers reek of colonialism and brown people should stop culturally appropriating the semiconductor.
The IEEE X/Open Group spent masses of bandwidth discussing decolonising a particular API (Application Programming Interface – ptsname – get name of the slave pseudo-terminal device) from August 2020. Some deplorable reactionaries even thought they might have better uses for their time as compatibilty requirements would make it unreasonable to drop the vestigial s.
I read my old history A level dissertation the other day. Who is responsible for the Zulu War? I only got a B, but as history it was at the very least very well sourced. I went to read the actual colonial office letters of Colonial Sec, the Cape and Natal high commissioners, the army commander and selected quotes. I even quoted cetshwayo the Zulu king “avoiding war with the British is like warding off a falling tree”. Ok it was a bit of a crap/naive question. Assuming war is bad, who do we point the finger at? I accept there are probably more interesting questions. Yet I always wondered whether it was the fact it was a risque topic in the eyes of right on examiners that lead to a lower mark. I pointed the finger in the end at Bartle Frere the local guy who made it happen despite his boss and the cabinet saying -no war. I made no mention of evil colonisers, (if you don’t count the Boers) i just said this happened, probably because of this and that reason. Nowadays unless you’re going to go on an anti colonial diatribe i’d doubt it would even get a pass.
And don’t mention to Wiccans the use of hexadecimal….
“there is an urgent need to work on decolonising digital innovation, digital content, and digital data to explore how databases and images might support indigenous knowledge systems”.
Africans don’t give a shit about that. They use mobile phones to trade, bypass bureaucracy and other things they want, which may include bushmeat, witchcraft, female genital mutilation and child slavery; traditional indigenous knowledge systems that may not be quite what the Oxfordians have in mind.
Hallowed Be,
“Yet I always wondered whether it was the fact it was a risque topic in the eyes of right on examiners that lead to a lower mark”
History is always going to be more in the political/madrassa subjects because it is ultimately of little real concrete value, unless you’re talking fairly recent history. You can find interesting things in history to inform your thinking, but in a direct, measurable way, it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong. And there’s also lots of incentives because of fashions and government funding, to be wrong.
You can see this with archaeological digs where they seem to keep finding things recently that fit with certain views. Like there were lots of immigrants here, or lots of women fighting. Hmmm. Funny no-one noticed that 30-40 years ago, isn’t it?
Decolonising computing? Ok, who’s been colonising computing? Round them up and set the lions on them.
OK we might have stolen some of the ones but the zeroes were all ours.
BoM4-
“History is always going to be more in the political/madrassa subjects because it is ultimately of little real concrete value”
agreed its ripe territory for the reinterpretation according to current mores and also lots of woo, but its still a discipline that can be done well/badly. Its measurable value i suppose is how much of it is consumed…Books, tv programs, articles, which won’t hold a candle to tech and science but lots of things are like that.
BOM4: “You can see this with archaeological digs where they seem to keep finding things recently that fit with certain views. Like there were lots of immigrants here, or lots of women fighting. Hmmm. Funny no-one noticed that 30-40 years ago, isn’t it?”
The recent news story about a girl of Nigerian extraction being buried in an Anglo-Saxon grave had my bullshit detector going. I’d admit it’s theoretically possible that someone from Nigeria could have found their way to Dark Ages Sussex, most likely via the middle east through the arab slave trade, but the numbers must have been vanishingly small (and no-one ever thought to mention what would have been akin to mythical creatures living amongst them).
BoM4: “Nearly everyone is working in abstracted environment where you don’t know and frankly don’t care.”
Yeah that works until it doesn’t – and you’re wondering “why is this so slow?” with not a clue as to how to solve it.
Sorry I’ve been working in this field for a long time and I see people who think knowing Javascript is all you need.
@M
Today’s answer to poor performance is almost always “throw another few VMs at it”.
It’s worse that that. They’re saying that the savages aren’t ready for modern civilization and thus we must only let them have what we think they can handle.
And *I’m* the racist one?
I’ve done a fair amount of performance work in my time, but horrors, no degree. Isn’t it more knowing what the specific setup is trying to do within the hard/soft/user environment rather than basic computing principles (which I also learnt in commerce not academe)?
What. The. Fuck. Did. I. Just. Read.
Insanity!