Computerization The Old-Fashioned Way / Dimas Castellanos

The Information Society (IS) is an effect of a process of convergence among technological advances, the democratization of information, and communications, which erupted in the 1980s with such force that it caused the United Nations to call a world summit on information, which took place in the Swiss city of Geneva in 2003. At this summit, a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action were adopted, whose principal beneficiaries are individual persons who have the training for intelligent and creative use of modern technologies, without which social and cultural progress would be impossible.

Among the demands of the new information technologies, arising from their transformative character, is the need for immediacy when introducing them. One peculiarity that distinguished Cuba since the colonial period: the steam engine, patented in 1769, was introduced into Cuban sugar production almost immediately. The railroad, inaugurated in 1825, linked together the towns of Havana and Bejucal in 1837. The telegraph, which sent the first long-distance message in 1844, initiated its first line in Cuba nine years later.

The telephone, which premiered its first service in 1877, came to Cuba in 1881. The electric light bulb, which in 1879 was enjoyed in only a few important cities in the world, by 1889 was being utilized in Havana, Cárdenas and Puerto Príncipe, and in theaters such as Payret and Tacón. The motion picture, patented in 1895, was exhibited in Havana in 1897. Radio, which commenced in 1920, was launched in 1922 in Cuba. Television, almost parallel with the United States, began broadcasting from the first Cuban station in 1950. While the Internet began officially in Cuba in 1996, more than 10 years after it was in use in other latitudes.

This past February, the First Vice President of the Council of State, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, at the closing of the first National Computerization and Cybersecurity Workshop, set forth some issues regarding the Information Society that call for discussion, debate and consensus.

1. Internet access implies at the same time challenges and opportunities, and constitutes an action necessary for the development of society under current  conditions.

If the Information Society is distinguished by the generalized and efficient use of modern technologies in the era of globalization, when information has transformed the raw material of all activity and of each person, nobody could deny that, besides being necessary, it contains challenges and opportunities that must be faced. Regarding this thesis there cannot be disagreement.

2. Its access strategy should become a fundamental weapon of the Revolutionaries to achieve social participation in constructing the project for society that we want, starting from an integral design of the country. And I add that the usage strategy of this tool must be lead by the Party and should involve all institutions, and society, to achieve the fullest use of its potentialities in service of national development.

If we start from the premise that it is a necessity for all, then Internet access strategy cannot become a fundamental weapon of the Revolutionaries, but rather of all, because the Revolutionaries are only one part. And the project for society that we want (if that “we want” includes everyone) has to be agreed-upon by all.

Therefore that inclusive stragegy should not and and cannot be led by a party, which, as its meaning indicates, represents a “part,” whereas development is incumbent on all, not only on the Revolutionaries and the members of a party. This statement contradicts another part of the speech in which Díaz-Canel said that “we need to distinguish ourselves by a computerization with all, and for the good of all.”

3. Regulations and rules that govern access to the Internet and its use, should be coherent with current legislation, and align with the general principles of the Constitution and other laws, and adjust to the changing needs of social development.

Rather, besides being led by the Party and being a fundamental weapon of revolutionaries, Internet use should be coherent with the general principles of the Consitution and other laws. Here, the contradiction is so flagrant that it becomes inadmissible.

A phenomenon as modern and changing as the Information Society cannot be subordinate to a Constitution that urgently calls for profound reform, unless the purpose be that computerization should face the same fate as other projects in the country that remain stagnant.

The argument should be the opposite: the changes implied by an information society obligate us to reform a constitution that for a long time now has not met the needs of development, above all with regard to citizens’ rights and liberties, which constitute an unavoidable need of the Information Society, and which in the current Constitution are subordinate to one ideology and one party.

The preceding material demonstrates that the Information Society inescapably implies the respect for and complete defense of human rights, the recognition of their universaility, indivisibility and interrelation, and democratic access to the infrastructure and services of information technologies.

Díaz-Canel’s speech was uttered two decades after the official start of the Internet. It also came after President Barack Obama stated that Cuba has one of the lowest rates of Internet access in the world, that the cost of telecommunications in Cuba is exorbitatantly high, and that the services offered are extremely limited.

Among measures intended to empower the Cuban people, President Obama listed the need to increase Cuba’s access to communications and its capacity to freely communicate, and so would authorize the commercial export of equipment to improve the capacity of Cubans to communicate, including the sale of communication devices and articles to establish and update related systems.

The delay in introducing these measures has been accompanied by restrictions that seek to ensure that information obtained online corresponds with the Revolutionary ethic, and will not endanger national security.

In 1996, Decree 2091 was issued, whose articles state that the basis of Internet access policies will prioritize the connectivity of legal persons and those institutions of greatest relevance to the life and development of the country; that to guarantee fulfillment of the principles laid down in the Decree, access to networked information services of global scope would be selective; and that direct access from the Republic of Cuba to global computer networks would have to be authorized by the Interministerial Commission created by the Decree. [1]

Later, in 2003, Resolution 1802 resolved: Charge the Telecommunications Company of Cuba to employ all technical means necessary to detect and impede access to Internet navigation services via telephone lines that operate in national, non-convertible currency, starting as of 1 January 2004. [2]

The creation of the Information Society is incompatible with the priority of the Revolutionaries, with subordination to ideologies, and with a Constitution that endorses these restrictions. The contradiction is there: either the demands of modernity are assumed, or we run the risk of continuing to widen the information gap in the country and of Cubans in relation to the rest of the world.

The full use of the possibilities offered by the new information technolgies to foment online access that is free and autonomous, rich and diversified, plural and thematic, interactive and personalized, is a necessity. Especially in the era in which the diffference among levels of development is measured in terms of Internet connectivity. Simply put, computerization the old-fashioned way must be uprooted.

Footnotes:

1. Decree 209 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers on Access from the Republic of Cuba to Global Computer Networks; 14 June, 1996.

2. Resolution 180/2003, dated 31 December, 2003, of the Ministry of Computer Science and Communications.

Originally published in Diario de Cuba

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

27 March 2015