Lessons from El Paquete, Cuba's Offline Internet

An overview of Cuba's digital landscape, including infrastructure, access to online media, and hacker culture, based on research, interviews and Columbia SIPA student field research in 2016.

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2013

opendemocracy.net, 2017

Although the Cuban government has tightly controlled information access for more than half a century, a small number of Cubans have access at work. In this paper, we examine Internet and social media use by early adopters in Cuba in early 2015, as we enter a time of potential change. Specifically, we explore Cubans' access limitations and the activities they do online, as well as what Internet access means to them. We conducted interviews with 12 Cuban Internet users and observed their social media use. Our findings suggest that access limitations and slow network speeds greatly restrict Cubans' Internet use. To counter these limitations, Cubans are collaborative, often conducting online research and posting photos for friends with less access. Based on these findings, we propose future work to help meet Cuban citizens' information needs.

Cuban Studies, 2021

Telematics and Informatics, 1987

Knowledge and information fuel the growth in most sectors of today's global society. Individuals need access to information in order to make the most basic to the most complex analyses and decisions. The linking of "computers and communications" enables one not only to access large quantities of information in a timely manner, but also manipulate it to meet one's needs. What effect will the linkage have on individuals in developing countries? Will a low cost, effective computer communications system be developed that focuses on meeting developing countries needs? Will individuals in developing countries find barriers in accessing information reduced or magnified? What opportunities might exist for individuals in developing countries to participate in the "information age"? This paper seeks to address these questions by reviewing several computers and communications concepts and exploring a case study which uses the concepts for practical applications. The author proposes enhancements to the case study for increasing the effectiveness of developing country access. An explosion in the amount of knowledge and new information has taken place over the last several decades. This explosion is not only taking place in the sciences and engineering but in almost every facet of the industrialized world. One need only look at the role that on-line computer databases play. Not only do these electronic libraries hold a vast array of the knowledge generated in recent history but they are now accessible to the individual. Over the last five years, increasing numbers of microcomputer users have developed the necessary skills to access these storehouses of knowledge and extract the facts they need to carry their work or personal enjoyment forward. This is an important development when the scope of "print" publications is viewed and one considers the number of new articles published in a specific field much less the entire knowledge base. On-line databases are not limited to the scientific and engineering fields, although these fields powered the development of the computerized libraries. Now, financial, health, business management, law, education and almost every conceivable part of the industrialized economy is reported on. Databases exist in the United States that allow one to plan their travel itinerary (Official Airline Guide), make an airplane reservation (Easy Sabre), or analyze one's stock portfolio and then make a purchase (Quick & Reilly, Inc.). Each of these elements have one relatively new component that separates them from the early computerized databases. They allow a responsive action to take

Location Technologies in International Context, Edited by Rowan Wilken, Gerard Goggin & Heather A. Horst , 2019

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2014

Cuban Studies, 2021

Journal of Urban Technology, 2001

to the Internet in the United States and in many countries in Western Europe has been gained through Internet connections via home computers. In Peru, however, people not owning computers have managed to gain access to the Internet through cabinas públicas de Internet, seemingly ubiquitous, small-scale storefront operations, similar to cyber cafes, that offer low-cost, reliable connections. These connections are widely used and are responsible for Peru's being one of the countries with the highest collective access to the Internet. In the United States, for example, where most Internet connections are made via home computers, on a typical day in April 2001, Netsizer counted 2.28 Internet users per Internet host; on that same day, there were 79.96 users per host in Peru. While other countries in Latin America that have high Internet access rely on government intervention, Peru's government offers no support other than regulating competition in the telecommunications sector. Access to the Internet in Peru is the fruit of thousands of private initiatives of small, local entrepreneurs, who have been quick to understand that there is a high demand for information and communications technologies (ICT) that cannot be met under the traditional scheme of individual ownership, especially under the present circum-HE technology associated with information and communications technologies in general, and the Internet in particular, has had a number of different methods of diffusion. Access Hilbert