-------------------------------------------- Another dimension 2019.08.03 13:26:30 -03 -------------------------------------------- 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