After reading Mr. Budi Rahardjo‘s weblog entry about “Dimanakah para pemimpi (komputer) Indonesia tinggal?” (in Indonesian, my native language) I realize that this is what I’ve been missing from the IT scene in Indonesia. We have tons of “technical” IT mailing list and almost none of the IT mailing list that discuss theories, philosophies, activities and other non-technical stuff but still important in the IT scene.
From technical point of view Indonesia IT scene is great. Most of the IT experts are technically good and capable and obviously can compete with other country’s IT experts (although it could change according to this and this – which really make me kinda scared about the future of IT in Indonesia). But when it comes to “research and development” or borrowing the term from Mr. Budi’s article “sharing the dream among the dreamers” I have to admit that this is the missing point.
Why is it important about the “dream”? It is all about vision. Technical stuffs are important because we are still need those to advance our knowledge. But technical skill without vision is just stagnant. Indonesian IT experts will be nothing more than just “operator” and it already happened.
The same phenomena is also happening in Indonesia design’s scene. They are really good at technical and adapting the styles, really damn good. But still, there is a lack of vision (I will be not fair if I am saying that there is no vision at all, there are some but what I am saying is for the majority of the scene itself) and “dream”. Of course we must be proud of the expertise in technical and styles adaptation of Indonesian designer but what is missing is still missing and if this situation is not anticipated I am really afraid that the “slavery” of intelectuality will happened sooner than we might think.
Well, I am not an expert in both of area, I am not an IT expert and also not a design expert. I am just happened to be the person who fortunate enough to work on both field and now combining those both field into some certain degrees. That combining process mostly take place not in the technical point of view so it explain why I love to discuss about IT and design in the level of concept, theories, philosophies and not just technical (well, that’s why the term RTFM invented – for technical question, just read the manual first then discuss it together according to the manual and experience after trying what it was written in the manual… don’t get me started on this, I could continue for days).
So, yeah, if the Indonesian community of “dream sharing” do exist, kindly let me know. Or as the last question on Mr. Budi’s article, “should we start something?”. Time to get the snowball rolling…