Technology Rationed in a Technophobic Country / Somos+, Javier Cabrera

A Cuban ration book for basic foodstuffs

Somos+, 2 July 2015 — The coming of WiFi to Cuba is very good news. Better still is the reduction in prices from 4.25 CUC to 2.00 CUC, although that is still a very high barrier for connection to the Internet. [Roughly 2 days wages for one hour. -ed.] From here I want to congratulate the promoters, Cubans or otherwise, because it has been clearly and unquestionably a step that benefits the citizenry.

However, all the data indicates that there is excess capacity to go faster, and too much hesitancy to accept the help offered by companies in the United States and other countries. We clearly have a technophobic government that is trying to deal with a problem outside its scope and trying to “reinvent” the technology as a part of a useless and expensive process, redesigning and adapting; but more than anything, delaying its adoption in time.

The security of information and the lack of a technological culture continue to be the preferred pretexts to validate the slowness of a process that can’t wait any longer. Nothing is said about how to attack these supposed problems, which, by the way, exist all over the world and have a huge number of solutions. Increasing training in technology on a large scale is the only alternative, and for this there is only one method: “You learn to dance by dancing.”

We are in a process of technological literacy, why don’t we send thousands of literacy specialists to every corner of the island with laptops and connections, because we are standing in line for 21st century literacy?

Many of us question the secrecty of the technology strategy, the silence about the agreements… if there are any, and the news about companies wanting to help that only comes out in the foreign press. It is annoying that our technophones, who undertake these efforts on our behalf, supported by our effort, our GDP and our remittances, are not capable of explaining why in 2020 the number of those connected will be 50% and not 90%, or how and at what cost we are going to be connected.

If security is so critical, if the agreements are not suitable, if filling the country with antennas is too expensive, or if what Twitter, Google and the rest are offering is bad, we want to offer our opinions.

We voted to adopt technology, which exists and works, in a normal and above all very quick way. We voted en masse to liberalize access and to declare it a right. How did you vote?