Saving the world, one lame suggestion at a time
Believe it or not, I entirely skipped Facebook back in the day, because I was already on LinkedIn. LinkedIn seemed to me to be not only predating, but also to be much more poignant in its goal: maintain a network of colleagues, former colleagues and other professional acquaintances, anchored around an updated, public, sincere version Continue reading Et tu, LinkedIn?
Finally I m wrapping up, but first I want to have a look at those who actually gain from the current state of the complicated Internet. The winners So, cui prodest? When humans add arbitrary complexity to the world, the beneficiaries tend to be those who specialise in dealing with man-made complexity: a long time ago Continue reading The Balkanisation of the Internet (5)
In the previous chapters, I described how the initial abstract, decentralised, standards-based internet born in the anglosphere and mostly detached from geographical constraints, has evolved (devolved) into something much less homogeneous to build and operate. Here begins the wrap up. Outcomes But isn’t all this complication just the cost to pay for the proper enforcement Continue reading The…
In the previous chapter I described how ultimately China not only succeeded in isolating its population from mainstream internet, but, by doing so, it created a whole different technological ecosystem, with broad impacts on large international companies. Now we get to the core of the matter, the current state. Borders multiply Ok, so now we Continue reading The Balkanisation of the Internet (3)
This is the second part of the long text (I don t dare to call it an essay) that I wrote on the progressive segmentation of our initially unified Internet. In the previous chapters I covered those early, very unified (and also very Anglo-American) days, now the first border appears The first border You see, from Continue reading The Balkanisation of the Internet (2)
The beginnings Once upon a time, there was a network of computers spanning the whole world, where each computer could connect following the most effective route, without having to worry about physical, political, or technological barriers. A computer on that network could decide to host an email service and emit its email addresses, or expose Continue reading The Balkanisation of the Internet
A manager left the company, either because their boss fired them, or because the manager decided to change (note to self, I should write something dedicated to the effects of management volatility). Recruiting the new manager was an intense effort (we hope at least!) and the team has been more-or-less-officially leaderless for a while. Everyone Continue reading The first 100 days
Immutability will solve all our problems, but only if it s applied perfectly everywhere. Mock everything. Microservices, the more, the smaller, the better. Advice that can be applied with little understanding of the problem rarely has good results, but it provides short-term satisfaction, a feeling of safety and, thanks to the ease of application, a delusion Continue reading The emptiness at the…
Almost exactly one year ago I posted a list of lessons I learnt about software development organizations. Recently that post generated a lot of interest, with people approving, disapproving or generally commenting one or more of my pointy points. Some feedback can be seen in the comments section of the post itself here, but most Continue reading Hiring, firing and more