disruptive technologies and changes in our everyday life;
The new version of the Netsize Guide is now available for download. The document presents a review of what happened last year in the digital media environment, specially focusing on mobile. It also brings points of view of important professionals in the industry, analyzing the most important factors of the year.
I recommend at least a look at the guide. It is free.
Download it here
I love reading much more than writing. Actually, writing is not my strength. For some time, I thought it was. In general, I like much more to read, to imagine, to recreate on my mind lots of ideas, that barely ever end up on a paper – or in a screen, as in this case. I don’t know yet if I believe in astrology, but everything they say about my horoscope- piscis – is true. I live in another world, imaginary, maybe Mars, maybe Venus, and create many situations, that probably will never happen, all the time.
Well, I wrote all this to come back to the first point. I love reading. I could say it is a hobby, that for some time I thought could be a profession – maybe working with literature, and the mixes journalism can have with them. No. It is just a passion, and having to work with it takes part of the best part of reading – the simple passion of changing the pages, passing the eyes through the words, imagining scenes, places, people, ideas…
The passion for reading became a passion for books. Since very early I started a personal collection of colorful books, with much more drawings than letters, that my parents and sisters used to read for me. I learned fast. Part of that collection is spread around, since I gave to many children. Part is still in my parent’s house, and my niece is the one delighted with the same drawing, with the same princess stories, the same speaking animals that used to be the magic population on my dreams. Now she is the one inventing new stories to the drawings in the book, transforming frogs on princess, and so on. She has also an imaginary friend, what makes me thing she is more imaginative than I was. 
I grew up in a small city, best place to any kid to grow up. I played in the street, less than my older sisters, but I also did. And there is nothing better than this freedom the small places give. But at the same time the cultural opportunities are smaller. Luckily, I grew up in a house with a small library full of words, in magazines, newspapers, and books, a little collection already started for me. And I really think I was influenced – luckily, a very positive influence from home.
I grew up, and the books are still part of my life. I can move from many cities, but the boxes of books go from one place to another. They didn’t come to Madrid, but to my parent’s place. Many of them are spread around, I always lend my books, and as always, they rarely come back to me. As a friend said once, books we count on kilos and in the size of the boxes, because it is what is worth to take with us. We leave the ones we don’t like that much, but the good ones, are always there.
What was my happiness on finding out that in my neighborhood in Madrid there is a small library (check the map). Small, but complete. I feel comfortable on those places, and frequently I end up there not to get new books, but also to read the technology cases from the Master. It is quiet, a very good environment. In this library there is a children’s room that is the dream of any kid. Very colorful, with thousands of books, some toys, small colorful tables and chairs where they can seat and free their imagination. The first time I went there I paid a lot of attention on that small room, and just though: it would be wonderful if in Brazil we could find many of those libraries around. Coming to this place is a great incentive to any children to start reading, enjoying the books, and becoming passionate readers.
One of these days I was there, it was late at night, they were almost closing, I was getting two movies and a book (Noticias de un secuestro), and there was a little girl, probably with 3 years or so, leaving the colorful room crying. She didn’t want to leave. And her mother was holding her, saying “calm down, you come back another day”, just as all the mom’s do to take their children from a toy store or something. This little one is in our team already!
And what all this things about books are doing in a blog about technology? I am writing them because of the launch of Kindle 2 this week. Yes, for people like me, to have one of those toys would be very nice. I don’t have one yet, but would like to. It is weird that 2 years ago I was completely against it. As a passionate for books, I was defending them with all my forces. But after a while, well, digital books are quite interesting. They are cheap. For someone that almost always buy books on used book stores, spending the whole afternoon to find a good deal in the middle of all that dust, having the opportunity to buy them for a cheaper price, or getting for free is a wonderful deal. The other aspect is having a lot of books available. On vacations, I always end up having some extra kilos on my backpack because of them. Kindle is small. Kindle is light.
It is good for already passionate users. It is good for the ones that were already touched by how delicious is to imagine. But I really hope that all this technology don’t take people from the passion of reading. I hope those little colorful rooms full of colorful books won’t disappear. Never! I hope that people read more books than Facebook. Read bigger texts than twits.
I am a skeptic enthusiastic. And also never remember who said what. So, someone, once, said that we easily can understand the benefits of new technologies, but we hardly can understand what we leave behind on adopting things. Are we getting too used to read twits? Is this affecting our capacity of understanding more complex ideas? Are we transforming complex ideas in very simple things without understanding them? Sorry, no answers.
Back to the little girl crying in the library, that environment influence, will always have a positive – tremendous positive – influence on attracting new passionates to our team. That hopefully, will increase with kindles and other brands of the same. Not get smaller. I hope!
I never thought it would be so difficult for me to have a blog. Having studied journalism, where we usually have tones of stuff to write everyday, and having trained during that time to do not rely on “inspiration” to write, I really though it would be much easier to do that. And for this distance regarding my text, I am really thankful for those teachers, specially Scotto and Locatelli, that will probably not read these lines. But it seems, at least until now, that I am not a natural blogger. I see nice things online, on the streets, well, everywhere, and just tell myself: I will post something later. Well, normally it doesn’t happen.
Maybe I got too used to the deadline approach, in which you always finish revising your work minutes before the due time. Maybe it is a consequence of the years in the journalism, where you don’t have too much time to do anything, so you don’t have choice but do it in the last minute anyway. Work under pressure. That is what works. Or maybe not. I am a lazy blogger, a lazy writer, that is it. And skipped from the journalism just in time.
When you have a blog, there is no deadline. You post whatever you want, if you want, if you like, well, that is it. My good friend and teacher, Regina Carvalho, once posted in her blog, Coisas de Regininha, that having a blog is like having a pet: you must feed it everyday, you need discipline, you must have something to say.
One day in the Master, we were also discussing about that, but the overall opinion was the opposite: the blog is free, everyone can go there and write anything. Yes, I know that. But not everyone is ready to have a blog. Not everybody have really valuable thoughts to add. Maybe it is a matter of age or experience. Maybe it is a matter of subjects – you didn’t find yet what you are good at. Maybe it is a matter of enjoying doing it.
I though I was ready. And since it is a challenge, I am going to try it hard. But I really thing that the level of bullshit in the web today is astonishing! And don’t see value in all of them. Seriously! (The number of amazing blogs is also big)
In that point, I more than agree with Regininha. Sometimes, when you don’t have anything smart to say, the best choice is to be quiet! The same about blogging! A little bit of criticism is always welcome!
It is all a matter of speeches and the dominant opinions in the arena – now, the dominant idea is that internet solves all the problems, but we can discuss it later. The idea is that all the companies must have corporate blogs, all professionals must put their opinions online, no. Not all. Having worked a little bit with corporate communication, I can say with at least a little bit of authority – THAT IS NOT TRUE!
I am an enthusiast of technology. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be studying a Master in Telecommunications and Digital Business. And I really believe that technologies aggregate a lot of value in our everyday life. I am enthusiast of projects of Digital Inclusion, and I am trying to develop something to apply what I am learning here to projects in this area. Don’t know what yet!
But we must be a little bit more skeptic, a little bit more critical about technology. It can be a good help, and really can be a factor to reduce differences in access to information, public services, and much more. It can create a lot of value, and I agree, completely, with that.
But the point is: it is not good for the discussion to put it as the unique truth! As the point to solve all the problems.
Sometimes, the problem cannot be solved with technology. It will still depend on human beings, and on a little bit more of humanity.
Not everybody is a blogger. I am probably not, you can see it on the lack of links and the size of the text. But since it is a place to try, to experiment, let’s do it!
Bloggers, what do you think?
Once I was in a Modern History course at the University (it is one of my favorite subjects, always), and the teacher was talking about changes. The main idea, probably from someone that I should know who is (but don’t) is the difference between facts, context and structure. Facts change fast. But while facts change in question of seconds- and new facts happen, and new, and new and new in a pace very difficult to understand and leaving a track very difficult to follow – the context doesn’t go along with it. The context is as a first structure, that changes according to many variables, with a slower pace. Then, after that, we have the structural base, more rigid, as if it were the land were the context lays and where this infinitude of facts happen – one after the other. This structure is like a rock. And doesn’t change that fast. Society patterns, between them prejudices, moral and the rules that guide people take a long time to change and are considered part of the structure. I still remember the professor comments – “That is why today we still have some thoughts that could be from people from Middle Age. Nothing really against” – from his point of view, I am against! – “Only is something we can observe.”
I am an enthusiast of change. And love the chances to reinvent myself all the time, as if I was starting all over again, from zero. Just like moving to a new city where you don’t know anybody – and all the preconceptions just disappear- from all sides. There is nothing like traveling to analyze again all your opinions, and, in every new friend, every new place, every unique experience, understand that your prejudices and opinions could be – and probably were – too short-sighted. There are thousands of worlds outside! But it is always time to confront the ideas- that damn structure that takes so long to change – and come with new points of view. It is always time to ask “Why?” or even better, “Why not?”
That is why I feel lucky of having the age I have right now, in the moment we are living right now. Being an enthusiast of all these changes, I couldn’t imagine a time where so many ideas, so many concepts, so many paradigms were changing at the same time, in a pace never seen before in history, giving us the chance of changing- and making changes- possible. I couldn’t imagine a better time to question all the already established truths and reinvent reality, or at least see it from a brand new angle.
A Bit of Change is about that. In all ways, how new technologies are offering the structure to all the changes we are observing, or better, all the changes we are participating- and creating – from the possibilities that ICTs are providing. Because the network is not made of computers connected – it is made of people, like us, that can make things different.
Maybe I am naïf, but I really believe that they can.
This blog is a view from inside. from someone that had virtual friends when was a teenager, that accompanied, from very close, the changes in many patterns of communication, and now, as a business student, is trying to understand it better from the market point of view. It is a blog from maybe the first generation that can have some kind of nostalgic feelings about the first technological steps. Maybe I am saying that because I am some weird kind of geek, maybe not. This definitions, categorizations, they change, but you can pick one, create a tag, I don’t care. It is a blog that will keep trying to understand the structure (or maybe change it), analyze the context and post important facts to understand all this mix.
And since there is nothing better than knowing new points of view to contradict all that is settled, it is an open space to any idea and comment.
Therefore, ideas, things, people, everything change.
Luckily, yes. They do.
