IT professional, The evolution of work

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic." Arthur C. Clarke.

    Technology is what we mean for new things that seemed like magical about 20 years ago and so the technology people had around those years where stuff like a Game Boy (Released by Nintendo in 1989), DVD in order to replace the old vhs and add more fiability and efficiency, Windows 95,98 (Released by Microsoft) which established the base of the next softwares incoming, the World Wide Web or Internet as we all know it, this all are examples of which type of technologies we had and it is so interesting to think on how much things has changed.  Our way of relating between us has changed a lot, by now the social medias as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, apps that has changed a lot our way of facing life and relationships/behaviour. 

    But I would like to focus a little on how the profile of an IT professional has developed in my country(Spain) and what it implies today. As I have previously told in the paragraph above there has been a lot of new technologies that has affected our way of finding jobs our teaching and learning technics, so what about the IT professional, has there been also any difference in their preparation/learning? 

As the development in industry were starting to grow sharply, there was a need to start developing new learning skills for the professional and this happened in the universities. They focused to teach engineers the basics of this new techs, such as basic programming such as Java. It was needed for the new apps that will appear later and so they needed also help from companies. Let's say that the universities gave the base and the companies gave the rest. It was a race of who had the best professionals that could help the company to release any product that could revolute the industry and society, so for that the training that needed to have a professional was really big but also limited. There wasn't a lot of information as now due to the Internet, but as it started growing up the information sharing also grew up helping to develop more and more IT professionals. 

Nowadays, as an IT student willing to become an IT professional I can say that they are teaching me the most basics as 20 years ago but also the creativity incorporated. And for me I see it as almost the same process but of course not with the obsolete technologies, with the new ones. Even with the pandemic the education as changed and I can say that I feel more of a worker prepared to face whatever happens next. I feel motivated and willing to find a job where I can even develop more myself in the technical skills. 

One last thing I spotted out, is that now it is more easy for new IT professionals to create their own business so this helps a lot to find new technologies due to the creativity young workers are having thanks to their learning during their studies. It is easier to become a startup and focus on research of new ways of relating between us such as Tinder or even WhatsApp. 

Let's see what happens in the next 20 years! 

Do you behave the same way online as you do in real life?

 Hello! Today I would like to discuss about how we behave online. I found it interesting in the way Virginia Shea describes it in her "The core rules of Netiquette". It is one of the ten rules you should follow in order to be a "healthy" online user. 

The behaviour online has took my attention due to its complexity. You can be whoever you want and behave however you want on the web but is that good? I mean not being as you are in real life is good for our human relationships? Well actually in my experience I found out that our way of relating with friends/people online varies a lot from what we really are. Instagram for example, most of the people there doesn't behave as real life, and why? Well there are many reasons: money, followers, visibility, social status, trendies... 

I think this cannot be good for us, I mean yes in the way of connectivity with other people but bad for our personality. Even in young people we find out that is more normal to find kids focusing on being like a footballer or as an Instagramer selling clothes or dancing instead of focusing on themselves. I don't want to be pessimistic about this because I am sure that there are other people who really use the social media properly but we are having personality losses in our society and this isn't good. 

Now, do you feel like being yourself while you post something on Instagram/Facebook/whichever social media? Do you feel free online or there is  something that prevents you from being yourself? 

No matter what and no matter who, defend your personality online!! It will be good for you and for everyone, be yourself!! :) 

COPYLEFT what is that?

Today I am going to focus on the term Copyleft andwhy is it important to consider this in your works or proects as an author. Let's check it out:

First of all , what is Copyleft?

Copyleft is a creation license that consists on releasing a computer program, a work of art or any other type of document for its copying, modification and redistribution. Which means leave it for public use without restrictions (this is the strong definition). It is a legal practice that is carried out in the exercise of copyright. 

Since copyleft is the opposite of copyright, the terms 'left' and 'right' are used to demonstrate the  opposite meaning. Even the representation of it is diferent: Copyright appears represented as a C in a normal way and copyleft reversed.

But are there types of coypleft or categories maybe? The answer is yes of course, there are two main categories: Strong and weak. 

    -If we focus on strong copyleft we find out that is when for example an author of a software makes the code open source so anyone can use it or at least without many problems over restrictions. An easy example is General Public License (GNU) which you can use this software on your computer for free.

    -The other part of copyleft as we said is weak copyleft and of course it is also permissive on the users but it results on a free part of a licensed software or project. So this means that you can use the whole program without changing the source of the part which

has weak copyleft. Basically you can use it but not change it. For example the Mozilla Public License (MPL)

So now I wanted to ask you something, if you create a new software and it gets "trendy" would you make copyright about it? Or you would leave for free use?

What do you think about Copyright?

    Recently I have read a proposal of changes about copyright in our society (Chapter 2: "A Constructive Proposal For Copyright Reform" in the review: "The Case for Copyright Reform" by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström) and I found it really interesting in they proposal to reform the way Copyright is being performed.

    I agree so much with the idea that copyright is preventing creativity to grow and I think this is one of the worst things that can happen to humanity in terms of progress, we can see that this has happened too in history specifically in the Middle Ages where the progress of science was punished even with death and innovations were seen as a complete heresy.

And in terms of economy and money there is a sentence they said "No business model is worth more than the right to private communication and freedom of information" and well it is interesting to relate copyright with one of the greatest human rights, does it constrains freedom? 

Information Society: A review from the future

 

    As I could read from the 2004 Information Society Report to the Parliament of Finland by Pekka Himanen (Link here) there were a point of view really well based on creativity and development. Also I can say that it was objectively optimistic and with a very good future projection refered to all the area that surrounded our society in the 2004. But lets see if the model proposed has been effective or not and if the ideas mentioned about the welfare policies and society have been accomplished.

    There were a list of trending topcis about global challenges which some of them have been fulfilled such as increasing international tax competition, the new global division of labour, population ageing, increased pressures on the welfare state, the rise of bio-industries,  regional concentration, a deepening global divide and even the spread of a “culture of emergency”; this means that the review made on 2004 has been well done in a futuristic view. It is true that some of these trending challenges are still rising so we can say that maybe in 17 more years there will still be with us.

    What is really interesting is the way of how they described the global competition models between USA, EU, ASIA and the rest (less developed countries or association of countries), for example for USA neoliberalism which is still rising in a matter of freedom, is the most powerful economical countries, militarily really powerful it fits the description of nowadays but we can say that now the Asian model has been balanced in an economical and military way, maybe not in a developed society of freedom but still a huge potential industry attracting companies due to the lower taxes and productivity policies than in other countries. EU has it has been described in  the review it is a welfare state and dependent from creative tools in order to maintain the welfare, either way the “Finnish model” (EU) has experienced a good development in areas such as technology, social interaction and polotical management. So in this way I don't think that EU is still stagnated, maybe a bit due to the Covid-19 crisis that has affected the american and european model in various ways.

    Creativity and development comes togheter so there is also in the review an interesting way of analyzing the foreing migration into the EU countries but we can say that in the ones that have more organised structures of politics, efficiency in the inustrial areas and social welfare taking care on their employees has gained a lot of foreing population for example Germany is the leader of Europe and it is because of the well develpoment in the important areas that involves a society of welfare (industry, education, sanitary system, strong govern and concerned politics). 

In my opinion the review of 2004 has been really interesting in a way of a base to develope another futuristic review of which challenges we will face now and what is the key of everything is creativity. 

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

 

    Nowadays we are used to communicating in real time via the Internet, using instant messaging services such as WhatsApp or audio and video streaming services such as Facebook chat or Skype. Just 25 years ago the origin of all these services was born, a protocol known as Internet Relay Chat, that is, IRC.

    IRC started as a project that came from Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988 while working at the University of Oulu in Finland. It was 25 years ago when Oikarinen wrote the code for the first version of the IRC server.

    It was an extremely innovative protocol for the time, a service that allowed real-time communication over the Internet (chat) either in channels that allowed interaction between several users or through private conversations between two users with the added bonus of being able to exchange files and send them to other users.

But how this has affected our lives? Actually this programe was so used when the cybercafes started to appear. But when Meseenger was released then IRC decayed from it's popularity.

Anyway, Jarkko Oikarinen currently works at Google and, curiously, still linked to communications via the Internet since Sweden is part of the team working on Google Hangouts, so we can say that the IRC base is still alive in our lives such as Google Hangouts.

2 Interesting Technologies (Obsolete and not)

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen in August of 1988 it was a boom in Internet.

The first form of communication in real time that became popular on the Internet, the famous chat. The best way to meet people with your interests or in your area without getting up from your chair. There was no portal that did not have its chat, and IRC servers sprung up everywhere. 

Unfortunately among modern social networks and instant messaging programs they ended up killing him, but surely you still have good friends from a channel. 

Webcam!

The first webcam was released in 1991 by some lazy students from Cambridge university that wanted to check the coffee levels before going to buy them by then it was a huge progess. 

It is interesting how this was done and why and now how we are using them almost every week due to work stuff.