Title
Locating the Internet in the Parks of Havana.
Abstract
Since March 2015, the public squares of Havana have been transformed from places where people stroll and children play to places where crowds gather to try to connect to the internet at all hours of the day and night. We present a field investigation of public WiFi hotspots in Havana, Cuba, and examine the possibilities of internet access these limited and expensive hotspots present to individuals, many of who are experiencing the internet for the first time. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2015-2016, we underscore the reconfigurations that have resulted from this access, as evolving internet users reconfigure their interactions with place, time, and individuals in their efforts to locate the internet. We also discuss the implications our findings have for the design of internet access interventions in Cuba and in other low-resource environments across the world, as well as the broader implications for social computing across diverse geographies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1145/3025453.3025728
CHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
Cuba, internet, WiFi, place, HCI4D, social computing
Crowds,Psychological intervention,World Wide Web,Computer science,Social computing,Rural Internet,Internet access,The Internet
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.39
23
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michaelanne Dye1756.84
David Nemer22811.45
Laura Pina313411.48
Nithya Sambasivan425324.33
Amy Bruckman51500182.36
Neha Kumar620444.30