Thursday, July 19, 2012

The cost of obsolete technology

Yoani Sánchez recently posted a sad anecdote. She had just gotten away for a two day vacation, when she learned that the server at the Cuban blogger portal was down. That meant she had to return to Havana and get an English translator to contact her friend who, following instructions Yoani emailed to her, fixed the problem.

This story reminded me of a visit to Cuba in the mid 1990s -- before Cuba's IP link was established. I recall bounding up a staircase to a spare second floor office in Havana with an enthusiastic young man who proudly showed me the PC that handled international UUCP trafic and hosted some email accounts for Tinored. (It may have been Tinored system administrator Carlos Valdes, I'm not sure). At the time of that visit, we were not political, not Cubans and Americans, but confident, naive citizens of the network.

Yoani's post took me back to that day, because it sounds like the Desdecuba server is configured like that of Tinored in 1995, requiring hands-on management. It also reminded me of my school's first Web server, which ran on the desktop computer in my office. It was running Windows 3.0, and crashed a lot. I had to go to my office and reboot it whenever that happened.

Coinicidentally, I just posted a teaching note tracing the evolution of the ways we deploy applications on the Internet. It has gone from standalone PCs to server rooms, blade servers, datacenters, virtual servers and virtual servers in the cloud. I no longer worry about servers and my Web site and blogs have not been down for years.

Obsolete technology caused Yoani to miss her vacation, but, more important, it means that a generation of Cuban users and technicians are being trained on obsolete technology. The technicians are learning skills that have little application outside of Cuba today. The users do not know what the modern Internet is like so they cannot envision new applications, and trained, demanding users drive Internet innovation.

With the ALBA 1 undersea cable, Cuba has a chance to start bringing some users and technicians into the modern era. (See this earlier post). For the sake of Yoani and anyone who is still telnetting into a computer to read text email, I hope they do it soon.


  1. Hi Larry, I have to say that this post dissapoints me, and it also kind of hurts my feelings.

    A few points that need to be clarified:

    1- Yoani is not an IT specialist, and she did not study an IT-related program in Cuba.

    2- Taking the content of a personal blog of ONE person as a mesure of the quality of the studies of a country with 11 000 000+ habitants, it is not fair, to say the least.

    3- As a former university professor of an IT related program, and as a graduate of the same program, I can assure you that "technicians are NOT learning skills that have little application outside of Cuba today", or at least it is not like that everywhere in Cuba.

    4- Do you know the IOI Olympiads in Informatics'? If you have some free time, take a look on the medals list for previous years. You will be amized on how many times you will find Cuba there.

  2. MG -- I am truly sorry if I have hurt you -- that was surely not my intention.

    1. I knew from Yoani's blog that her degree was not in IT, but assumed that since she was notified and had to come back to Havana that she was the system administrator.

    2. You are right -- I was over generalizing about the quality of IT education. Last year I reviewed the UCI curriculum, which contains a lot of practical work on real projects. Is the education at UCI a lot better than other universities?

    3. Would you agree with my assertion that Cuban users (as opposed to technicians) are not being exposed to modern applications?

    On the other hand, I would argue that Cubans are in a good position to imagine innovative applications for older technology that is still in wide use -- second generation cell phones and messaging for example. Has Cuba developed innovative messaging applications? If so, they would be of value in many nations in Africa and elsewhere where 2G phones dominate.

    4. I was not familiar with the IOI Olympiads in Informatics so I Googled it. I only checked the results for 2007-11 because each year is on a separate Web page. In 2008, a Cuban student finished 44th and in 2009 Cubans finished 136th and 147th. There were no Cubans listed for 2007, 2010 or 2011. Wikipedia lists past multiple winners, but none them were Cuban. Had Cuba done better in earlier years?

  3. Hi again,

    1- I do not know whether Yoani is the system admin of the server hosting her blog or not, but if she is, I would say it would be better for her to get help from someone who actually studied an IT-related career, in Cuba or anywhere else.

    2- About this: "Is the education at UCI a lot better than other universities?" In my experience, it is worse, since it is probably the younguest university in the country, and there are quite a few others with more experience in the topic and probably better professors. I am thinking in ISPJAE (Havana), UH (Havana), and ULV (Las Villas). Those three have programs either in computer science or software engineering that have been around for a few decades, and as far as I know they have always been up to date on current trends of technologies. It can always be better, but it is certainly not as bad as you made it look. For example, half of my classmates from the university are now living outside of Cuba, and none of them have had any problems finding jobs as software developers, and some of them have even been able to leave Cuba with a signed contract.

    3- I agree 100% with that assertion.

    4- I knew about the 2 bronze medals from 2009 and there are a few more from 1997 and some other years in between, but I do not remember now which ones. I will try to find out later.

    I am sorry for the previous rant, you probably did not deserve it, but I do beg you to be more careful with this kind of generalizations in the future.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

  4. Tinored... Yep, I remember. 1995... Seems like centuries ago.

  5. Washington claims it wants to help the Cuban people have freer access to the Internet, but the facts are at variance with Washington's claims.

    For example: Washington won't allow Cuba to purchase software or hardware from the United States. The border patrol seized computers bound for the island as recently as yesterday where they were going via Pastors for Peace. This is in addition to banning Cuba from using various Internet tools like Google Analytics, Instant Messenger, Google Earth and so on.

    Here's Prensa Latina's report on the computers:

    1. Walter -- I agree that the US embargo has contributed to the lack of Internet access and connectivity in Cuba, but it is not the sole cause. The policies of the Cuban government and a lack of funds are also critical. In recent years, the impact of the embargo has been diminished by the emergence of China as a major supplier of networking equipment and expertise.

      As to your assertion that the government has banned the use of various Google tools, please supply a reference.

      You omitted the link to the Prensa Latina report.

      Walter -- as you see, I am always willing to post your comments even though you are unwilling to post mine on your blog. Do you see any irony in that?

    2. Larry, the "messages" from the US government regarding Cuba and Internet are indeed contradictory... Not only Google services are indeed blocked (google earth, google code, and more recently google analytics), but also other supposedly "free services" of the open source software community have been banned to Cuba ( for example). It does not really make any sense...

    3. Muchas gracias

      Thanks for the confirmation. I just did a search, and it seems the US Treasure Department has gone back and forth on software sales and access to Internet services. (See, for example:

      To some extent the blocking of services is moot because international connectivity is so restricted, but I agree that this does not make sense.

    4. I think it is not "moot" (I had to look up that word in a dictionary...), because it effectively enforces the vision that the Cuban government promotes of the US government being an enemy of the Cuban people (and not only of its government).

    5. Good point -- it gives the Cuban government a propaganda advantage. Furthermore, the people and organizations that can afford international access could use those services. I think I take back my comment about it being moot :-).

  6. Muchas Gracias,

    I received a comment to this post in your name, but it had a bogus URL ( in the link for your name. It is possible that you (or Blogger) have been hacked. I'd like to publish your comment. Can you check into this and get back to me via email or some other channel? (@larrypress on Twitter, +larrypress on Google Plus,

  7. About this question:
    Has Cuba developed innovative messaging applications?

    Programmers in Cuba do work on "innovative messaging applications" and other types of mobile applications in general, but usually as freelance developers and not under the umbrella of state-owned companies. I have a few of those applications on my CV that I developed while I was living there, with support for communication through GPRS, Bluetooth, wifi, and the now discontinued irda, using different networking protocols such as UPnP (for transparent connections to consumer devices), SNMP (for remote monitoring of automated systems), xml web services (for enterprise level app), etc.

    I used to work with small teams of developers, and some of my former colleges are still living in Cuba.

    1. It would be cool to learn about the software you and others have built for Cuba -- such software could be relevant in other nations. Also -- I did not know that GPRS is available in Cuba.

  8. By the way, being a freelance programmer in Cuba was illegal at that time (which was my main reason for leaving the country), and it is still illegal even after the latest reforms from Raul Castro.

  9. In my case at least, we did not build software "for" Cuba, we built it only "in" Cuba :)

    Unfortunately, being a freelance programmer in Cuba is illegal (even after the latest economical reforms from Raul Castro), so I cannot provide you more details about the projects I worked on without possibly bringing some troubles for me and for others. The fact that something as harmless as "freelance working" is illegal in Cuba was one of the main reasons for me to leave the country.

    About GPRS, it is indeed available, but only for representatives of foreign companies and high-rank government officials. Initially I conjectured that ETECSA would use this technology for allowing Cubans to connect to internet, but given the latest news and rumours it seems this is not going to be the case.


Real Time Analytics