Con El Paquete Semanal
June 22, 2018 ☼ Exotic Research ☼ Published Elsewhere ☼ Technology ☼ Travel
Illustration by Baimu for Yorokubo
Well, my research project on El Paquete Semanal is finally out in the world, and I’m happy people are digging into the content. I got to know EP and understand the cultural context over the course of two trips to Cuba, and really appreciate how the system has grown up under the island’s unique constraints. Take a look at the report and some more analysis from Quartz, which featured it as an “Obsession,” or Reddit, where it came up
Meanwhile, if you read Spanish, the artsy-future magazine Yorokubo hit me up for an interview, from which I nabbed the neat illustration above, as well as Cuban-ish ((I’m not sure where on the Granma Spectrum it falls)) site Isla Local. The work was also cited in an r/science discussion on Reddit, and caught the attention of Czech publication Technet.
Meanwhile, loads of cool folks tweeted about the project. Thanks for the support, everyone.
Really great story about whats in “el paquete”, Cuba’s homegrown sneaker net samizdat service. Great example of the Cuban genius for the creative workaround. https://t.co/Fdqs96Qrso
— Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ) March 15, 2018
Inside Cuba's El paquete semanal, a weekly 1TB dump of copyrighted media: absent of broadband, industrious… https://t.co/bVIUkD1sb8
— Waxy.org (@waxy) March 13, 2018
In Cuba, there’s an underground network for content distribution called “El Paquete.” It’s like Netflix and Spotify without the Internet. Super interesting @Qz Obsession email from @adampasick and @jessanne today. https://t.co/VZwRh4kUQI
— Simone Stolzoff (@SimoneStolzoff) March 16, 2018
Amazing. As we say in Spanish, la necesidad es la madre de la invención.
— Sergi de Pablos 🇪🇺 (@sdepablos) March 15, 2018
"Inside El Paquete, Cuba’s Social Network" https://t.co/HGlS4synwC
Fascinating sneaker net: “Inside El Paquete, Cuba’s Social Network” by @paryshnikov https://t.co/pLKwakgImV
— Camron Assadi (@teiwaz) March 15, 2018
/via @EthanZ