huridocs-tech Cuba faces the web revolution

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
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## author     : klaas@kulturserver.de
## date       : 26.07.99
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we had an article in The Guardian today written by Jules
Marshall (jules@xs4all.nl, who also wrote the Piazza
virtuale article way back in Wired).

++++

Cuba faces the web revolution

Is the internet a tool to promote the views of Havana or a
CIA plot backed by 'imperialist' North America? It's the
question Castro and comrades are now confronting, reports
Jules Marshall

Thursday July 22, 1999

"Culture will be the weapon of the 21st century," Fidel
Castro told the first Unesco conference on Culture and
Development held in Havana in June. It may be the only thing
on which the president of the Cuban council of state and
council of ministers, and the rightwing US ideologues who
blockade his country agree.

The Unesco conference had a level of debate rarely heard in
investor-friendly conferences back home. Among the delegates
from 43 countries, discussion of the net was generally about
how it was a tool of Anglo-centric neo-liberal
globalisation. As one delegate noted: 20% of the world's
cultures face extinction due to global audio-visual culture.
The state is weakening and national/regional identities are
under threat. The problem of critical selection from the
flood of data is not just a problem of the poor, but all net
users.

Nevertheless, there was also a prevailing feeling of "we
can't prevent the net, so we must learn to use it".
Globalisation itself is not necessarily a bad thing (ask any
Marxist), but what kind of globalisation, and for who?

"Internet?" said Castro in a brief, unscheduled speech.
"Yes, we can use it - to tell the 80% of Americans online
that they have to stop and realise the Earth is on the edge
of an abyss."

But as only 2% of Latin America has the net, we must invent
something else, he added. "In the revolution we used our
loudspeakers as much as our weapons. If peasants can't read
or write, how can we reach them?"

I was in Cuba with members of the Ponton European Media Art
Lab, a German organisation, to give a workshop at the
conference and meet culture representatives to discuss using
Ponton's Kulturserver (http://www.kulturserver.de) software,
a non-profit project, as a front-end to a proposed national
open-access network for artists and institutions.

For one hot, exhausting week, during which the five-month
drought that had reduced water supply to an hour a day in
Havana finally broke, cultural representatives from
ministers to techies met by day at the surprisingly
sophisticated and entrepreneurial national multimedia centre
(CEISIC).

Evenings were split between organised displays of
folkloristic and democratised "high" culture, and extra-
curricula seafront rum drinking. All proved useful and valid
aids to understanding this opinion-polarising society, and
its desire to take part in the new, technological
revolution.

Another theme of the Unesco conference was the role greater
unity and stronger regional identity can play in countering
the tide of Anglo/neo-liberal culture, and Ponton believes
Kulturserver is just the product to support that role. It
strengthens local, national and regional identity by
offering individuals and groups a simple, cheap means of
exchanging art, ideas and culture, at the same time creating
a coherent navigation system for accessing the chaotic mass
of information on the internet.

"A lot of people here are afraid the net will increase
propaganda," Ponton director Benjamin Heidersberger said at
the workshop. "The net is open and content becomes
transparent, but that's a two-way thing. You can talk back,
show the world what your culture is. It's hard to control;
there's always a way round ideological barriers so if you
put something on the net, no one can control the flow. It's
very fair."

Despite the economic blockade and crisis, Cuba is perhaps
the major Caribbean networking nation, and has a sizeable
user community. By Western "one computer per desk"
standards, Cuba is a hopeless failure, and only a tiny
percentage of the population have a PC at home.

And yet more than a decade ago the Cuban Youth Computer
Clubs established TinoRed with Castro's explicit support.
Tino (a Cuban cartoon character and logo) Red (network)
operates more than 150 walk-in computer centres throughout
the country for people to learn the basics of computing,
telecommunications, and desktop publishing. So far more than
200,000 have taken the opportunity.

And freedom of access? As with any transitional system,
there are mixed signals. A proclamation guaranteeing the
internet for all Cubans (one day) in October 1996, shortly
after Cuba had been granted its class B licence to join the
internet, was quietly withdrawn soon after. There's still no
national policy, despite an inter-ministerial policy group
being established in 1998 on the internet.

Talk is now of "limited access to true universality", and
alternative models for wiring Cuba that serve the whole
population, not just those with cash. Distrust of dollar
ownership (only legal since 1994) is still such that if
you've got the $150 a month for a private net connection,
you're automatically suspect (and denied).

"You can find Zapatista news or hardcore pornography. But
that's the diversity of life, right?" says Abelardo Mena,
curator of the National Museum of Havana and co-ordinator of
Rayuel@, a non profit project for the promotion of the Cuban
and Latin American arts and culture. "The net means the
complexities of the real world converted to bytes. And
nobody, nobody, can stop that move."

Even so, "we are an underdeveloped country which fights
every day just to feed and cloth itself. Internet means
nothing to the major ity of the people," adds Mena. And the
intellectuals, he says, still find accessing the internet
"more difficult than talking to Bill Clinton".

"Cuba is so isolated, in every sense, that it is really
important to become an equal member of an international
network," says Klaas Glenewinkel, editor-in-chief of
Kulturserver. "They can put up as many .cu sites as they
like, they will still be perceived as 'official'. It's
important to elevate them from this to a new level. That is
what they need and want: a common platform."

Reflecting their belief that, contrary to much content on
the internet, it's local culture that has most resonance and
importance to people, Ponton at http://www.ponton.de is
building an international, decentralised network of regional
cultures, side-by-side with each other and equal in
importance. Kulturserver Cuba would offer Cuban nationals at
home and abroad, foreign friends and critics a neutral space
to meet, access and discuss contemporary Cuban culture.

"I think the Kulturserver proposal is great, because they
are offering an incredible technological support, and the
opportunity to work with and share a 'European' way of
making things: seriously, every day, and that's an
incredibly necessary 'school' for Latin and Cuban 'souls,"
said Abelardo Mena. He's keen to work with Ponton and
believes it is the "right way to open our culture to the
European and international public," that it will support the
increasing wave of German tourism to Cuba - all with very
important economic consequences.

Carlos Alberto Mas Zabala, deputy director of the Instituto
del Libro Cubana, is supporting Kulturserver and has offered
space for a multimedia studio/access point in his beautiful
institute in Unesco-restored Old Havana. He loves the idea
of being able to broadcast Cuban ideas and culture
worldwide, as an antidote to anti-Cuban rhetoric. He'd also
like to use it as an interface to a national literature
network designed to side-step the country's chronic shortage
of paper.

Given the current siege mentality, artists are unlikely to
be offered unlimited access to the net via Kulturserver
unless sanctioned by their ministries. As the coordinator
general of ICAIC (the Cuban film institute) told Ponton:
"Internet will be granted to the masses, but slowly and in
step with a retreat from aggression by Cuba's enemies,
otherwise, why give them the ammunition?"

"We have to be diplomatic," said Glenewinkel. "Kulturserver
Cuba is great even if the ministries act as filters. We
could be idealistic and immovable, or we can accept there
will be give and take. We're not keen, but we also
understand the unique situation Cuba is in."

Another sticking point is the cost of maintenance and
technical support, localisation and installation - "these
are not huge costs", says Glenewinkel, "but costs to us all
the same, and we want Cuba to take responsibility and show a
sense of ownership by paying... something. We appreciate
hard currency is in short supply, and we'll take anything
reasonable - the use of an apartment, even a few cases of
rum! But it's important - for them as well as us - that
something exchanges hands as a show of commitment."

How to go global but stay local It has expanded to nearly
1,050 homepages - a doubling in the last six months - and
includes servers for Hamburg and Berlin. Lithuania, Iceland
- and since the Havana conference, Egypt and Kosovo - are
considering joining.

Kulturserver would be perfect for Cuba's low-cost networking
philosophy, and Ponton expects the official go-ahead any day
now. The Kulturserver dream is to establish communities
world-wide, to transfer the technology to developing
countries to stimulate self-help, to help create markets and
to aggregate content.

In Germany, disintermediation - cutting out the middleman -
is a popular selling point of artists' agents, distributors,
publishers and galleries, offering a new channel for the

unrepresented, unsigned, and just plain obscure.

But can Cuba tolerate disintermediation of its government
institutions?

High-tech Cuba The Cuban government has already taken steps
to increase foreign trade with customers who pay in hard
currency, particularly targeting mining, tourism,
biotechnology, and informatics.

GDP that fell by 35% between 1989 and1994 - when rioting
marked the low point - has grown every year since. Cuba has
introduced the dollar and stabilised it against the peso,
introduced private enterprise, limited privatisation, and
still maintained its enviable education and health
achievements.

Today, Cuba's biotechnology industry competes in the world
market, with more than 160 products developed by 53 research
centres, ranging from genetically engineered
disease-resistant crop seeds, to a vaccine for hepatitis B.

The level of Cuban tourism is now greater than it was at its
height in pre-revolutionary Cuba (with up to 2m visitors
expected next year).

The collapse of real socialism and the increased embargo
since 1990 has meant the loss of 85% of Cuba's supplies,
especially specialised products like film stock and music
instruments, said Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto. But
the country continues to finance culture as a priority,
recognising that it essential to its spiritual/cultural
needs, not simply an ornament. The mechanism of funding
involves using part of the profits of the sale of art works
for re-investment. The sale is based on capitalism but the
distribution of income on socialism - what has been dubbed
'Market-Leninism'.

Within the prioritised informatics sector, the national
policy is to make Cuba a centre for software engineering and
development, which requires only modest capital investment.

The prizes: hard currency income, employment for an
oversupply of university graduates, technology transfer into
Cuba, international visibility, and applications to other
sectors of the economy. Its most notable achievement is
perhaps its centre for virus research and data protection
that has identified and documented more than 10,000 viruses
and made it Unesco's reference centre for the region.

Guardian Unlimited




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