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Another dimension | |
2019.08.03 13:26:30 -03 | |
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This week I'm enjoying my family vacation at my in-law's place. The | |
city is called Barreiras [0] and it has over 150000 inhabitants - | |
that's over ten times more than the city I live in. It has, however, | |
an HDI [1] of 0.721 [2], while Switzerland has one of 0.944 [3]. | |
This isn't that surprising given Brazil is a developing country and | |
Barreiras is not a state capital. What was surprising to me are the | |
many ways this gap shows up in everyday life. I know, the fact it | |
surprised me is also surprising - meta-surprising - I myself am from | |
Brazil, what was I expecting?! | |
While I'm here I decided to give a talk at a local college, mainly | |
to IT students (but we had attendance of people from different | |
backgrounds too), about the demand of IT professionals, the | |
opportunities and challenges from a point of view of someone who | |
moved abroad. Another speaker talked about the same from a national | |
and regional perspective. | |
It was a very interesting event and people were eager to hear me | |
speak, but at the end I wanted more to hear from their perspective | |
than to speak about mine. Technology is becoming more pervasive | |
here, but they have demands which are not met by "worldwide" | |
solutions. They adapt and do the best they can, but things are not | |
perfect (I wouldn't even say good, they are just minimally viable). | |
The landscape here would be perfect for the development of local | |
solutions by local hackers whose goals are to better their community | |
or region - no focus on worldwide user base. | |
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barreiras | |
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index | |
[2] http://www.atlasbrasil.org.br/2013/pt/perfil_m/barreiras_ba | |
[3] http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2018_human_development_statisti | |