My Disagio

Perhaps the closest in my language to “disagio” is “di ako mapalagay”. That would be “bugging uneasiness” or a “lingering discontent”.

There are a whole lot of things that create or give me cause to feel “bugging uneasiness”. While I am writing away (and I am on an Emirates flight from Dubai to Washington, DC.) I feel this uneasiness — that I could not yet identify my disagio! Maybe by writing about it it will pop out like a brilliant idea, which should not be.

So I scribbled. Elections. That’s where I do most work in since the 80s. Of course it did not occupy most of my young life, but only until I got older and adopted it as a profession did it. So what about elections? I actually do not work on elections elections. But I work with groups that are nonpartisan that observe the election process. Process, if rules are regulations were followed during the campaign, in the voting and counting of ballots, etc. — regardless of who wins or loses. So where am I going with this?

Disagio in the elections, especially in developing countries are many.  From contestants not conforming to rules and are just willing to game the system in order to win, to electoral commissions that are not exactly committed to the work that they are supposed to do. Candidates, in their campaigning accost everyone with noisy tirades and untruths. Reporting on electoral financing is so flimsy that we could not really tell how much money they spend and from whom the money came. What we know for sure is that no matter the amount received by and spent on the campaign, what is reported is a drop in the bucket and that bucket is kept hidden by design. I don’t know if I can find a disagio there. Let me see....

Then I moved to the personal. I looked at people, processes, systems, and where within those might lie a disagio. Nothing worth noting there. I fear. If people like me at the stage of my life cannot identify a disagio, how could we help improve the world? How could we be inventing things and processes if we do not see uneasiness.



Or, taking this to another perspective, discomfiture?



So (note to self) help! (I’m still on-board the Emirates flight. About two hours before landing. I’ll come back to this when I am at Union Station...some hours there before I board the MARC train to see my wife in Maryland. But for now, I’ll return to my scribbling.

Three hours later...once the train left Union Station, I went back scribbling. I think I found my disagio!

Apps update! Many of us take this for granted because of the affordable mobile internet subscriptions. Some app developers brandish updates as a normal thing and they say that they do this weekly to make sure that we (users) get the latest, blah blah. I had a bit of programming background and I think that some codes in the apps could be inefficient and OTA (over the air) updates just keeps them inefficient because there is no cost to push them. 

June 2, 2019 FB App update on iOS 

May 23, 2019 Google Docs App update on iOS

What’s my beef?! If any of you have been to or have worked in East Timor, Papua New Guinea or in Afghanistan — where I have worked in the past five years, you will know why. Data is there is expensive! Each update from say, Facebook, Google Suites (arghh!) is are over a hundred MBs (each time!). It is H-E-A-V-Y!

In this day and age, updates are unavoidable and are here to stay. But I hope they are not because of inefficient coding/programming (or whimsical!)

Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, along with many other voices in the world (mine included) are advocating for internet access to be a human right. I admire her when she said to her constituents that if your internet speed is slow, blame it on me. She owns up to the responsibility that every citizen in Taiwan should have broadband speeds.

Now back to my point, should I blame it on bad code? Yes, partly, because OTA as a delivery channel is convenient for both the developer and user. Security patches are not exceptions, as is in many cases, which are cited by developers as a reason to update. When bugs are detected a new version containing the correction could be deployed quickly. But to some, if not to many users, these constant and ‘regular’ updates are costly.

Therefore, I appeal to Apple and Android (am I supposed to go this far in the disagio exercise?!...oh well....) to instill standards on their app developers or apps that go on their platform. They must adhere to efficient coding standards, and far-in-between updates. But the larger appeal perhaps is for both platforms to talk to all mobile data providers to make any and all apps updates free of charge to all!