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Quantum Dots 2
Continued from last week...
The tech recovery that people were telling themselves was going on in 2015 hadn't quite come about like most people expected it to -- well, to be honest, most people were just sort of happening it would just happen, pretty much like the late 90's tech boom had happened.
In fact, while we're being honest, it probably wasn't a true recovery. What happened was this:
2006 or so, the off-shore competition for jobs becomes truly off-shore, everywhere. Indian programmers took on projects from the Americas, Mexican programmers took on Russian projects, Russians took on Indian code-churning, Americans took on UK software projects, and so on. Everybody cut their rates everywhere for doing a certain job, until rates got so ridiculously low that countries actually began organised rate-fixing against other countries to sabotage specific projects and initiatives.
The tensions escalated and the rates dropped until 2010, at which point the Pakistan had turned a good deal of the students in its universities to the computer science degrees in order to steal a large software project for a firm in the Northwest United States from a large consortium of Indian programmers. Also in the running for this project was a crack team of former Russian rocket scientists, literally, and a group of the old crew that created Java. It turned into a massive bidding war, and India and Pakistan's reserved were soon depleted, and an outsider group of former Nobel Peace Prize Winners wound up winning the contract, and proceeded to sink the project, which was slated to launch a new online store for a company that supported child labour, by purposefully doing a shocking job, delivering an incomplete and bug-ridden project four years late.
As India prepared a retaliatory strike against Pakistan by launching a plan to outbid Pakistan's own programmers for an application and training programme for the Pakistani government, the United Nations, which had seen some bizarre international policies in the recent years, stepped in, calling for all its member nations to sit down at the table and come to some sort of resolution regarding the outlandish state of software development in the world.
For four weeks, the emergency sessions were held, and the world held its collective breath.
A number of third-ish world countries, for whom a lot of this was a non-starter, as they still hadn't been provided with adequate basic necessities, let alone technology, were surprisingly influential, which led a lot of people to conclude that they harboured secret stashes of technology.
A collection of free software programmers gathered outside the United Nations building in New York to protest the negotiations and something else, which may have either been the inclusion of the third-ish world countries or the want for more inclusion of the third-ish wolrd countries, their position wasn't entirely clear, and wasn't helped by factions within their group splitting off at different points in the weeks.
At the end, a settlement was agreed, treaties signed. Peace reigned.
Which is when the build a better mousetrap competition was announced. The unprecedented harmony amongst the world's super and not so super powers due to regulated software development inspired people to declare the tech industries "recovered", and so awards and competitions were announced once again almost weekly.
Klauss, being a software developer, thought primarily in digital terms.
As did many of the other people who followed the competitions, and in particular the ones that followed the mouse trap competition.
Thankfully, it wasn't in the literal sense of the word. You know, the of or using the fingers sense of the word. But then, the mousetrap competition wasn't exactly literal, either.
You see, you didn't have to build a better mousetrap to win the competition. It was "a prize for ingenuity in the face of fears and obstacles we all face, as a community." Yeah, one of those touchy feely, haven't we all got it right kind of prizes. The kind you felt obliged to dream up when you felt you'd averted, as a race, blowing up the sun.
When the sun blew up. It was a euphemism we'd used for the end of the world. I'd tell my nephews and nieces, "Hey, listen, it's not like the sun's blown up..." or "Well, okay, but you've got a long wait until the sun blows up." Of course, my brother hated it when I talked to his kids about that sort of thing, but hey, I figured it was my job, as an uncle, to be that sort of person, with relation to the kids.
But there we go, digressing.
Klauss assembled a team.
To be continued...
disclaimer:
Watch your step, the floors might be slippery.
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