Fragile connections: Community computer networks, human infrastructures, and the consequences of their breakdown in Havana

Abstract

To compensate for their lack of internet access, Cuban video game enthusiasts and programmers have built vast grassroots computer networks, the biggest of which, SNET (Street Network), at one point connected tens of thousands of households across Havana. This vernacular infrastructure generated not only new means of access but also new relations between people and fostered new political subjectivities. SNET is heavily shaped by a local cultural ideology of resolver, of collectively navigating resources and limitations in a context of scarcity. Using the metaphor of modding (modifying), a communal practice within gaming cultures that describes alterations by players or fans that change the look or functionality of a video game, we show how SNET makers were forced to constantly adapt to the shifting technical, political, and social frameworks in Cuba. Expanding anthropological theory on infrastructures that shows how breakdown in many parts of the world is a constitutive part of how people experience them, we argue that makers of human infrastructures such as SNET must not only deal with material breakdown but also navigate the breakdown of social relationships.

Swap It on WhatsApp: The Moral Economy of Informal Online Exchange Networks in Contemporary Cuba

“…This only relaxed when admins saw that the police did not interfere with what happened in these groups. However, rules that are still strictly enforced in all groups, regardless of their objective, include the prohibition of political debate and the dissemination of pornographic material, restrictions that are also observed by the makers of Cuba's alternative media distribution networks SNET and El Paquete Semanal, who self‐censor their content to avoid trouble with the state (Köhn 2019; Köhn and Siré 2022b).…”