People are starting to make a difference by shaping local policy.

One of the things I've noticed, and found quite interesting, is how people have become a lot more proactive not just holding each other about their actions; but also their local government and other representatives about their handling of the pandemic.

Not only that, in some cases they were at the front of not only proposing what actions to take, but of actually taking them before an official came out to enact such actions. People are becoming not only more socially conscious about the needs of their local neighborhoods, they are actively shaping policy and how it is enacted.

 

People finally become active participant not only sharing important information among themselves, but actually having a hand in shaping how governments respond. It is becoming quite hard for governments to hide what they respond, and how they do it.

Finally it seems that more people are becoming conscious that they can wield the power to shape the response of local governments. And this is a very significant, since the best place to see how much importance has civil participation, and where the results can be seen more readily and faster. There is no better place to set the example that people can actually make a difference in all aspects of our lives, and we should be the ones having the biggest say on how the government does things.

One of the most lasting effects of the pandemic, and one of its most positive ones, is create a precedent that what people does matters.

Home office might finally become more widespread.

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 the benefits of an increase profits by not having to support offices for all their staff, and more productivity by having happier staff working more effectively.

Not everyone will benefit directly from this, but in the long run this could be a better way of conducting business. The technology was already in place, but there was no real incentive for companies to implement remote working. Actually, many where reticent of doing so out of fear that their employees would abuse it. But now that everyone involved has to make it work, it might help to make the case that its a real option to move forward.

While we might still have to see how it pans out, home office might finally become more widespread.

No country is fully standing on its own.

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 as many people as possible. We adapt to the new reality, or will be left behind.

We stand together, and on own we fall.

New brave world, we can choose if it will be for good or bad.

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 of the information we need for our daily activities.

Also, we have a bigger say on the content we consume, while being able to create and share our own. We can now be as active, or as passive, as we choose to be.

While, both as a society and as individuals, are learning how to be active participants of this new brave world, I've hope that'll have a positive impact for all of us.

No silver bullet for complex problems.

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 things in a way that its actually beneficial to as much people as possible.

There is no silver bullet, or simple solutions, to any of the problems we face. Yet, there is hope. Access to information by an ever increasing number of people has never been easier, or cheaper. Not only that, there ways that people can access to better education, and skills, to be better prepared to help move forward solutions.

What is needed in order to do so, is more people to willing to take responsibility to help bring solutions to the table. Also, work to make those solutions happen. All of these, being conscious that there always be new problems to solve.

If we want to make things better, we need to be part of the solutions.

Change has become a tool in the hands of the people.

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 something to be desired, specially when people takes control of it with the communication tools we have now at out disposal. Things like smartphones, and the social media they allow us to tap into, means that organizing for change at the glass root level is becoming not only easier, but actually affordable for an even larger portion of society.

The question is how long it'll take us to master this power for change, so to make it more effective to change thing in our favor. I'm still hopeful that is more of a when it'll happen, and not if it'll happen.

From this time forward, is time to take a more active participation on building the future we want.

Ignorance is not bliss, but the tool that keeps us subjugated.

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 making our minds is far easier than before, and we have better information to question what we are being told. Now we can actually come closer to the source than ever before, while having access to more than one expert to better understand what is going around us.

Not being actively learning, and keeping in touch with what is going around you, is detrimental to your interests and those of your community. It saddens me when I hear people repeat misinformation, and half truths, they hear because they didn't take the time to do even basic research to verify what they heard.

What's worse, is that the expectation of simple solutions to complex problems. It seems that there is a denial that reality is complicated, as such there is no silver bullet to solve the problems we face. Solutions will take time, and effort, in order to work. Most importantly, we'll need to keep learning new skills in order to face the problems that we'll be facing in the future.

Ignorance is not bliss, but the tool of those who want to keep us subjugated to their interests. If we want to be free, we need to arm us with knowledge and the skills needed to build a fairer world.

Socialism, the Internet, smartphones, and free markets.

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 the markets.

I feel somewhat vindicated that now I've the proof that socialism and the free markets can go together. It has always been a matter of how to bring them together, no if they can go together.

Socialism is a form of government, and the free markets are on the economic side of things. As such, socialism is the way we give the market a framework over which to work in such a way its benefits reach the most people as possible, while the negatives are minimized as much as possible.

The idea that markets will self regulate in a way that benefits the people, has been proven wrong several times. That's why we need a way for the peoples have way to regulate markets, through other means than the markets themselves. So far, governments have been the best way to do so.

Yet, the advent of the Internet, and smartphones, that allow people to connect among themselves and create groups, to have a more direct way to sway not only on governments, but on the markets themselves bypassing the need to use the old gatekeepers.

Now more than ever, the combination of socialism and the free markets, empower the people to have a stronger hold on their destiny.

Smartphones have change more than we realize.

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 them to make sense of it. Also because they need to be able to discern misinformation, lies and the such to be able to give the best of use of the tools smartphones are.

The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. As such, what we need to do is not to put it back in, but give people the tools to make the best use of what this means. If we do so, all the changes that smartphones have brought will be for the better.

Nostalgia for the past doesn't make our childhood better.

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 able to face the world they'll have as adults.

The thing is, that it'll be different from the world we live now. And trying to keep change, won't stop it from getting to us. And stubbornly holding to the memories from what was, doesn't exonerate us from allowing our children their childhoods in the way that allows them to face the world we are all living in today.

We all had the childhood dictated by the time we lived it in. We have to let each generation live, and make the best, of their childhood. Each generation has to face the problems of their times, at the best of their abilities.

Cinnamon: my desktop of choice.

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 schedule. What I'd like to see, is a release schedule mirroring the one Ubuntu has, though Linux Mint releases have been solid so far.

True being told, I'll probably go back to Linux Mint. I don't see much chance that Ubuntu welcoming Ubuntu Cinnamon remix an official flavor soon, so I rather support Linux Mint. Though I'd rather stay on Ubuntu, I rather go to a distro that uses my favorite desktop environment that has a better chance to continue support in the future.