Tsikbal: from my perspective

One of the things that it seems could change significantly after the pandemic, is the way we work and collaborate with each other. With employers asking a higher percentage of their workforce to work from home, and the amount of time that people will have to fulfill their jobs this way, it quite likely that a significant percentage of the workforce might just keep working this way. This could be beneficial not only for employers, and the employees, that fall in this arrangement. This could mean less people having to move on daily basis to their workplaces, alleviating some of the congestion we have on our cities, but also it could mean that by staying home they could spend a larger percentage of their income on local businesses of their neighborhoods. Not only that, quality of life could greatly increase by not having to commute and sharing more time with their families, or friends. Not only employees could save money, and increase their quality of life. Employers could see th...

One of the things that the outbreak  of COVID-19 has demonstrated, is how interconnected the world has become. It highlights how much people move around, not only for tourism but also for business. Very few things are completely manufactured in one country, or any country produces all the products that move their market places. Economies are interconnected in various degrees, directly or indirectly. There is no country that is fully insoleted from what happens on other countries, it has become a question on how much it will impact them. For better, or for worse, we have built a world where we share a common fate. This is why we need to start demanding governments to start working together in such a way that allows people to work together in a more effective way. Closing borders is no longer a viable option to make the best possible future come for us. Such integration is not out of the hands of the those who want to stop it, now we have to work to make beneficial to a...

For me, one of the thing that is more underused, and underrated, about smartphones, is how easy they make for us to access any information(and content) at any time, anywhere we are at the moment. Not only we can access it, but we have the opportunity to be active contributors to the pool of knowledge not just passive consumers of it. This fact marks a flexing point in human history, when the traditional gatekeepers of what went into that pool, and who could access it, are losing its power. Now, that role has been spread into more hands, many of which would be even considered possible. Old barriers have been broken, new ones come and go as we are still learning how to use this new power. Now, we need to learn the tools needed not only to find the information we want, or learn new skills. There is a need to learn how to filter trough until we get to the relevant information, and to process it in order to use it effectively. We are now directly responsible to find, and use, more ...

The fact that there are no simple solutions to the problems we face, is something that most people don't seem to be able, or want, to coupe with. So much so, that people seem more than willing to over simplify things just in order to feel comfortable with the world around them. Add to that, it seems hard to make sense of things with all the information we are constantly bombarded with continuously it make harder to make sense of things. It hard to filter what's information is relevant to solve any given problem, not to mention that its even harder to determine what is true. Without the tools of critical thinking, is hard to recognize what information is actually relevant to solve any given problem. To make things worse, not everyone receives the education needed to have the tools needed for critical thinking, much less how to use them. This complicate things, because it makes it hard to communicate that the solutions we need are complex in order to actually solve thing...

It's interesting, and somewhat irritating, that every time changes come our way people tend to forget that things haven't been a certain way. Specially in the last hundred years, we have seen changes come with unprecedented speed and scope. For the looks of it, things will continue to keep constantly changing in the short and medium terms. Only the speed of these changes might change depending on the area we are talking about, but things will be changing we like it or not. We'll have to adapt, and solutions found to the new issues that those changes bring. At the end of the day, people will have to learn to adapt to change and make the best out of it. For the look of it, the new generations are learning not only to cope with change, but actually be a part of it or be who makes change happen. More and more people are not willing to see change, but to change things by themselves. Change is becoming a tool, and not a problem. People are learning to see change as s...

One of the biggest ironies of having the tool that enable people to actually look into things to learn about them, or find all the information you need to understand whatever you want, is that most willingly don't do it. There are people who are even proud of not doing even basic research to have some level of understanding about any of the subjects that affect them. In some ways, ignorance is now somewhat of an option. With the advent of the Internet, and smartphones that give us access to it from mostly everywhere we are, is hard to make a point that people don't have access to information they need to learn about anything. Not only that, now there are many ways to access courses that allow people to learn almost any skill they choose, or have an interest in. Not knowing something is not an excuse any more not to go, and learn something about it. Whats more, now more than ever before we have access to news from many different point of views. Which means that maki...

One of the oddest combinations the Internet, and smartphones, have created is combining socialism and the free markets. What I mean, is that they have brought together people in order to see socialism as the form of government that brings the most benefits to the majority; and the free market as the economic system to follow that brings prosperity to the majority. As a democratic socialist , I've always believed that the combination of a socialist form of government, and a free market economy, is the best way to create more fair and inclusive society. The main reason why the combination of the Internet and smartphones is bringing socialism and the free markets together, is that it not only increases the transparency of both governments and corporations. It also allows people connect self organize, and have more say on how the government works, and to free markets even more by allowing, both the individuals and small producers, by allowing them a more direct access to t...

For me, its mind-blowing that having a device on your pocket that allows you not only to connect with others in real time, access wealth of information on any subject, but also create content or contribute any way you in an instant, has become so normal. Smartphones give us the ability not only of being consumes of knowledge, or content. They also give us the chance to contribute with knowledge to be used by other, or create content in a way that years ago would be unthinkable. In many ways, they also have made harder to control how knowledge spread and how we consume content. More than ever, this abilities gives people to take ownership of both knowledge and content in more immediate, and powerful way. And even though we are still far from being something that everyone can take advantage of, we are well in the path of it becoming a reality in just a few decades. Now, the importance of making sure that our children have the tools to process all of this vital not only for t...

It irks me somewhat when people compare their childhood with the one of the today's children, and proclaim that theirs is far superior just because the children won't be able to experience what they did. They seem to willfully ignore that every generation's childhood is different from generations past and future. The world each generation experience their childhood in a different context from each other. To compare how we experience our childhood to the one of today's children is not fair, since their world isn't the one we grew up in. We see our childhood with tainted eyes, ones that in some ways make it a bit better than it actually was. People forget that we have to give them the tools to be able to face a world that'll be different that the world we are now. Trying to give children the same childhood that we had, is not the best idea. We need to let them be children in the context of how the world is now, while giving them the tools to make them abl...

Though I've come it to like running GNOME on Ubuntu , I found it that after a while GNOME became quite a RAM hog . A few weeks ago, I ran into Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix , which brings my favorite desktop environment, Cinnamon , to Ubuntu as default. So far, I haven't used more than 4 GB of RAM with the same usage I had on GNOME. And, I've come come to realize how much more of a better fit Cinnamon is for my daily need. And, even though I like Linux Mint , being able to use Cinnamon as default on Ubuntu is something a like a bit more. Mainly because I prefer Ubuntu over Linux Mint, though I admit is mainly because Ubuntu was the first distro I used full time when I made the jump to Linux. Yet, I don't discard making the jump back to Linux Mint if Ubuntu using Cinnamon doesn't become an official flavor when 2021 come around. In a way, Linux Mint could be considered the official Cinnamon flavor, since its based on Ubuntu, yet it follows the long-term release sche...

I find it interesting how some people seem to see technology as either as something that'll save us, or what doom us. It seems that most don't seem to realize that most of the time, technology won't do either on its own. At the end of the day, technology on itself won't save or destroy humanity. It rather comes down to how we use it to interact with other people, and the world around us. All technological devices are merely tools that help us to complete a task, which on its own is not good or evil. The user is the one who is good, or bad, not the tool that was used to do the task at hand. The people who use any tool, are the ones who are responsible for the end results. To blame the tool, is to take the responsibility away from the one who used it. By doing so, we are shielding that person from the consequences that should come for the use, or misuse, that person has to face. If we want to people to use technology in a way that benefits all, or at least do...