Today at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference, I attended Jane Swarm and John Storm's talk, "Of Necessity and Humanity: What Cuba Can Teach Us About Ourselves and Our Own Technology," a fascinating talk about the technology lessons to be learned from the largely technology-free Special Period in Cuban history, about the hacker culture that inspired, and about what's likely to come of it in the future as technology floods into Cuba.
Tech emerges from Grey Market
* Resolver: excuse to be illegal to make ends meet
* Buying PC parts out of the back door of a gov't facility, assemble PC, sell
back to gov't* In Cuba all goods constantly circulate
* Inventar: improvise from limited resources
* Everything is misc and modular
* New means new config of existing parts
* A cinderblock house can be built ina week — what's what's "new"
* Barter:
* Man wants wood for a raft for Miami, traded laptop — political freedom for
national freedom* Piracy:
* Castro says it's a legit response to embargo
* Political act
