CUBA BANS PC SALES TO PUBLIC

The X Factor Blog links to an article in Wired, which says that Cuba has banned PC sales to its citizens. Wired says:

Early attempts to confirm the information independently were unsuccessful. Dozens of messages to Cuban retailers and government officials in Cuba went unanswered. Cuba’s spokesman in Washington, Luis Fernandez, was consistently evasive.

“If we didn’t have an embargo, there could be computers for everybody,” Fernandez replied when asked this question: Are computer sales to the public banned in Cuba?

The X Factor adds”That’s like asking: “What did you want for dinner tonight, honey?” And getting the response: “I’ll tell YOU a thing or two about Disneyland!” WTF?”

I’m surprised that they didn’t do this sooner. Alvin Toffler has consistently written about how photocopiers and computers have almost always been illegal in totalitarian regimes, because they allow for easy dissemination of information (such as books and articles about how the free world differs from totalitarian regimes!). Toffler once mentioned how successful The Third Wave and Future Shock were in China and the Soviet Union, but he didn’t see a dime of it, because it was largely distributed in bootleg form via photocopiers.