Note to editors: this is from 2013!
How Estonia became a leader in technology
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also the percentage of foreign programmers is high in international companies. Local or small IT companies mostly hire Estonians - for no specific reason imho, maybe just to keep the atmosphere native.
That is racism.
I didn't say they turn down foreigners, they just don't get applications from them. Also, Latvians and Ukrainians and such are white.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#23It's just like the lean startup process. In Finland and especially in Sweden, things are talked being talked about for years or decades. We need to plan, think, prepare, study, blah blah, whatever. You know what? Meanwhile Estonians did it, actually several years ago. Skipping (or doing really leanly) most of these major time and resource wasters.
Which goes against the wisdom of that Norwegian story about the oil resource management from a few days https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673157.
> The politicians and senior bureaucrats had not caught oil fever. A serious mining accident had recently brought down a government, and most did not want to touch oil matters with a bargepole. “Everything I said was met with, ‘Oh, you think so? Mmm. Maybe. Let’s wait and see’,” al-Kasim recalls. “This characteristic saved Norway from the curse of oil: the fact that they are completely incapable of getting carried away by the oil dream. They were very sceptical – plain horse sense basically. They didn’t want to move until it was absolutely proven that it was the right time to act.”
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also the percentage of foreign programmers is high in international companies. Local or small IT companies mostly hire Estonians - for no specific reason imho, maybe just to keep the atmosphere native.
That is racism.
Nationalism is a distinct "ism" from racism.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#25Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking” This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever. what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?
It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer. Where rethinking the actual process might actually reduce the actual interaction that is required from a person, to an automated system which can induce information that would otherwise be filled manually.
In Finland when filling your tax forms online, the form comes prefilled with numbers that are calculated from your tax info of the previous year. If there are no changes in your salary or benefits, you can just agree to the the form and it is done, without typing out anything.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#26Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking” This is the key. I think many people does not understand this or does not approve of this. By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever.
> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever. what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?
I think hornbill is just stating his key takeaway from the article: Rethinking processes from the ground-up digitally is much better than translating legacy processes.
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#27One little critique I have, is about Estonia's e-voting.
That's a total black box technology. Basically what they did is said "ok, let's vote using internet, and we'll believe results are true". They do not know is someone hacked them, etc. Voting data from the servers was transferred using personal computer and flash drive of some random sysadmin. It's horrible. In my opinion, they do e-voting for the sake of doing it and being 'first'. Though big thumbs up for e-citizenship.
IMHO, Baltic states are in the forefront of IT technologies. 3G works almost anywhere, 4G in cities. Internet is cheap and super fast (if you do not have 100Mbps connection - you have slow internet connection). You do your taxes, get your doctor appointments using internet and so on, for a very long time (since 2010 at least). All Baltic states have prominent startups, though Estonians where first to sell startup for big bucks (Skype).
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also the percentage of foreign programmers is high in international companies. Local or small IT companies mostly hire Estonians - for no specific reason imho, maybe just to keep the atmosphere native.
That is racism.
Do you know what racism, or even race is? You can be white but not Estonian, how does racism apply there?
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> By going digital (like e-governance), use of paper is avoided but the procedure remains same. Does it save time? Sure, it does. But the process remains tedious as ever. what's your point ? Ditching the process of having a government ?
It seems that usually when moving from paper to digital forms, the original form is just reimplemented to be filled out on a computer. Where rethinking the actual process might actually reduce the actual interaction that is required from a person, to an automated system which can induce information that would otherwise be filled manually. In Finland when filling your tax forms online, the form comes prefilled with nu…
I've seen this first-hand. All they want is the same paper workflow they had before, but with less paper, even if the old workflow is bloated and/or nonsensical.
Edit: A colleague phrased this brilliantly before: "We have these machines that can do literally anything we want them to, and instead we're using them as a poor imitation of paper"
Re: How Estonia became a leader in technology
#30It's just like the lean startup process. In Finland and especially in Sweden, things are talked being talked about for years or decades. We need to plan, think, prepare, study, blah blah, whatever. You know what? Meanwhile Estonians did it, actually several years ago. Skipping (or doing really leanly) most of these major time and resource wasters.
I've never lived/worked in either but it seems both Finland and Sweden have really successful and huge tech industries though?
I haven't been to either but they have an impact for sure in gaming.
Finland is home to Supercell and Rovio, arguably the two biggest juggernauts in mobile gaming. This has spawned many studios there.
Sweden is also big in gaming as the home of Notch and his little multibillion dollar game company called Mojang with Minecraft. And of course PewDiePie with the youtube game review new era, it also has spawned all sort of gaming/tech interest there. They seem to have a play for entertainment as well with Kung Fury.
Both countries are a force in creating content with technology, which is probably the winning strategy and both places have been ignited by it.