12.28.22
Gemini version available ♊︎What Happens When Flunkies Who Really Work for Google and Microsoft End Up Working ‘for’ (at the Expense of) Universities’ IT Departments
Video download link | md5sum ebac88a1014e13df9980a23c925b196a
Universities Gone Astray
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Summary: When institutions of higher education (colleges/universities) are occupied by people who cannot build and maintain systems the whole institutions are likely to be hijacked by ‘surveillance capitalism’ companies that work for the American government
EARLIER today we published part one (of four parts) from 'Digital Vegan' Andy Farnell (visiting professor specialising in sound and security), who bemoans the situation at universities’ IT departments. These used to be specialised and well-trained/highly-skilled departments, but nowadays they’re dumbed-down bureaucracy which became increasingly about selecting vendors to outsource to, i.e. not about technology at all. This is getting worse really fast, owing in part to the exodus of geeks and the influx of buzzword slingers (e.g. “Clown Computing”).
“Today’s universities seem to attract the very worst sysadmins, maybe those who could not find employment elsewhere.”“FOSS is useful in mitigating or even reversing the dystopian trends,” an associate has said to us after we published part one, adding that the culprits are “corporate flunkies working against the university, and double handful of resellers too.”
In the video above I tell my personal experiences, dealing with IT departments at universities from 2000 until 2012. I can still recall (from a decade back) some truly embarrassing stories. Today’s universities seem to attract the very worst sysadmins, maybe those who could not find employment elsewhere. █
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