HAVANA, Cuba , October, www.cubanet.org – In the program “Passage to the Unknown” — Sunday nights on Cubavision — they aired a documentary that showed that young Cubans are last in line in the digital world.
Among surprised and crazy faces, the segment showed a young woman on the street gathering opinions about Facebook, a topic addressed in the program by the journalist Reinaldo Taladrid, and “specialists,” among whom appeared the defender of official censorship: Iroel Sánchez.
To the question: Do you know what Facebook is? The few successes came from tourists and foreign students studying on the island.
In my neighborhood, he threw out the the question: What is Twitter?
For Alexander, a young high school student, Facebook could be a character in an adventure film. Rolando, however, a forest engineer with 20 years experience, is convinced that it is something related to auto racing.
What a horror! It makes you want to cry, or something worse.With the delay in using such a tool as essential as Facebook, who’s going to believe in the development of Cuba.
That young Cubans don’t know the social network that brings together a billion people, in 70 languages, shows the digital and technological backwardness of our country.
Emerging countries such as Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico are among the biggest users of Facebook, which forces us to recognize that we are lagging behind the digital world. We are at the back of the line of modernity.
We are an island frozen in time! Meanwhile the government remains committed to the internal blockade to maintain its absolute power.
The regime is not only leaving us as its legacy a country in ruins. In addition to the collapse of ethical and moral values, they are leaving us mired in digital illiteracy, with the goal of keeping themselves in power.
Jorge Olivera Castillo
From Cubanet 10 October 2013
