Dr. Óscar Nájera

“You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world.”

– Morpheus, The Matrix

Welcome to my turf on the internet, a unique place because it is mine. It isn’t inside a walled garden from an Internet monopoly. I get to do on it what I want. I set the terms and conditions.

I’m a profoundly curious person, hunting after every new thing. I studied Physics because it was fun. It allowed me to explore the only universe I’ll ever life on. And in its vastness, I found myself most captivated by the small things, the things you can grab with your hands, the things that are close to me.

My journey unfolded when I moved to a foreign country(France) to pursue my PhD in Strongly Correlated Electrons Systems. Those were amazing and crazy days. I worked to understand how the interactions between electrons affect their collective behavior.

Computers have been my most precious tool and weapon in my journey. Computers aren’t bound by the scarcity of nature nor the constrains of shape and space. They are a universal simulator and within them you can have anything you want with zero materials cost. Everything is the same distance away, everything has the same manufacturing process, you only have to put the work.

I’m incredibly happy that computers can be in the hands of everybody. Yet it saddens me that we don’t fight to keep ownership of them. Proprietary Software, Vendor Locked Hardware, captured spaces on the internet(the cloud platforms) take the endless possibilities away. You can only do what they tell you to do, and then they make it mandatory to do as they say.

Everything I know, originated by following my curiosity on the Internet. Which is why I believe in keeping it open and free for everybody. Which is why I use and contribute to Freedom and Privacy respecting software. Which is why, at great personal expense, I self host my email, online backup & file share, source version control system. I have to do it.

Software is more than stuff, it is more than information, it is executable knowledge. If having unread books lying around is waste of opportunity, not running your software is a crime against your intellect. You are not in control of what it does, and you have no idea how to do it yourself. That makes it really dangerous.

When I’m not in front of the computer, you can find me dancing. I like to dance West Coast Swing and Salsa the most. Dancing is the most amazing recreation form it is Art and Sport, it is a challenging craftsmanship.

You made it through that lengthy, text only presentation. Social media platforms haven’t hijacked you attention span. If you want to get in touch, the best way of communication is by email. You can communicate securely with me using GnuPG (If you don’t know about it, it is a good time to learn ). My key-ID has the fingerprint:

7D28 EBAE F208 A715 363D 3C7A BF54 14CD C5E4 73B3

You can verify my linked identity to that key on my keyoxide profile :