Posted: February 11, 2011 04:40 PM
Cuba Is Half a Century Behind in Technology
Currently on display at Pabexpo, the exhibition center located in the
wealthiest part of the city, are computer-related products created
within and outside our country. Guests from all over are brought
together there, including a large group of foreigners who I imagine are
more interested in taking a trip on our Paleolithic technology than
doing business with local firms. The Kaspersky Group, for example, is
showing a version of its well-known anti-virus program, developed in
conjunction with the national company Segurmatica. Everything has been
made to look like an exhibition of this type anywhere in the world, were
it not for one detail: This is the Island of the Disconnected.
Already well into the year 2011, inhabitants of the "Cuban archipelago"
cannot buy a bus, train or airline ticket on the web, we don't know the
sensation of managing our bank accounts online, and purchasing a product
through the computer screen is something we have seen only in foreign
films. Still, today, my compatriots have never handled bureaucratic
paperwork via email, not even the simplest of requests for one's own
birth certificate. Don't even talk about reserving some vacation on the
flashy webpages of the travel agencies Cubatur or Islazul. Among my
hundreds of friends, none have managed -- from here -- to recharge their
own mobile phones on those portals that offer the service, without
having to stand in the long lines at the ETECSA office. We are a people
who have no opportunity to pay our bills through cyberspace and who live
as software pirates faced with the impossibility of purchasing licensed
versions.
Here we live at a stage that is more characteristic of the first half of
the twentieth century than it is of the twenty-first. Thus, the Computer
Science Fair appears as a glimpse into the future, a shop window that
displays to others what we haven't even tasted. After the visitors
return home, they will praise the skill sets of the Cuban computer
scientists and remember the tasty mojito they were given at the farewell
party. Meanwhile, we remain in the twilight of the disconnected, turning
on autistic computers unable to connect to others. We dream -- it's true
-- of one day filling out a form on the Internet where a phrase will
confirm for us: "Thank you for your purchase, your ticket to Guantanamo
has been reserved. Have a nice trip!"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-is-half-a-century-be_b_821759.html
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