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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
.
