Cuba Gets Computers!

Posted by ben

May 16, 2008

I’ve been using a computer since I was eight or nine years old. I remember when my Dad brought home our first computer, the Commodore 64, and it was the talk of the neighborhood. The neighbor kids would come over to play the original classics like Impossible Mission and Boulder Dash.

I remember learning the basic command prompt skills needed to use the box…skills that I still use today on my Ubuntu desktop I have in my home office. The early adoption of computers has dramatically affected my life, as well as it has the lives of just about everyone else in the generations of my time. Because of this early training, I am now delving into high tech business ventures. Its an exciting and quickly changing industry that I love working in.

Our Cuban neighbors to the South, however, haven’t been so fortunate. Some of Cuba’s state officials and employees have had access to computers and the internet (more tightly controlled by the government than even China’s internet) but the typical citizen has never even had the opportunity to touch a computer. The communist government has effectively kept personal use computers out of civilian hands, until yesterday that is. The “new economy” that Cuban President Raul Castro has begun to roll out has already given civilians access to video games, cell phones, and some other electronics. Yesterday morning several electronics stores across the island starting selling computers legally. (See AP article)

Cuba has had quite a black market on computers for about two years now, and according to Slashdot comments made by supposed “Cubans” they even had internet cafes hidden away in dark chasms where government officials didn’t care about. This marks the first time that the government has officially deemed it okay to have a computer though. Castro was so nice to release computers to the general public, though, that he forgot to make sure the computers they were selling were worth a dime!

Cuban Computer Specs:

Intel Celeron Processors
80 GB Hard Drives
512 MB Ram
DVD Player
Bulky Old School CRT Monitor

Perhaps the worst thing about this controlled release is that the computers are selling for $780 USD! The state controlled average wage in Cuba is just shy of $20 a month, which means citizenry must save every penny earned for 39 straight months before they can afford one! Cuba does an excellent job maintaining “equality” and a horizontal hierarchy through its ever so “just” governance. [read sarcastically] They seem to have forgotten though, that no one in Cuba can buy these computers except for the select few people in that nation that the government decided to give good wages to (the President and other powerful politicians’ families).

For you non techies to understand how this price compares to the United States prices, I am now selling a computer on a local classified site that has a processor that is twice as fast, twice the space on the hard drive, twice the memory (RAM) and the DVD player is actually a burner (meaning you can both play and burn DVDs). Mine doesn’t come with a monitor, but if I wanted too I could go to a thrift store and pick up a monitor like the one they’ve packaged with this computer for $15. All in all, my computer is selling for only $300. It’s a brand new Dell, still in the “never been opened” box, with a full 1 year warranty on it.

The Bottom Line:

Cuba citizens can have computers! Legally! This means that everyone else that already had computers can now take them out of their closets. This means that Cuba is going to begin to open up like China has so everyone there doesn’t starve to death (like what is literally happening in their buddy nation, North Korea).

My prediction is this; Cuba will have an almost completely open internet (Saudi Arabia and China are closing in on this fast) within five years, computer prices will drop from $780 to $400 for the same configuration within the close of the year, and President Castro (he is actually starting to deserve that title, instead of dictator, because he is moving mountains for that poor little country) will continue to roll out technological advances until his citizens see him as a hero.