Chi Le
Reading the article, "Cubans Forward to Using Internet," I remember the situation of Vietnam in earlier years of 1990s. This was the stage of an economic embargo of the U.S. over Vietnam, which was similar as Cuba now.
In that period, the Internet was not popular, so we, a programming group, could connect computers together based on local network to share files and printers. I remember the operating system which was set up in the computers was MS DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), and later it was Windows 3.x. In that time, we also made an accounting software to manage foreign currency which was transferred to Vietnamese through my company while banks didn't have the function. Software which helped to develop the accounting program was Dbase and then Foxbase.
In that time, computers were not common because they were too pricey and imported from foreign countries in strictly surveillance, portable hardware more than official hardware. I fortunately worked for a state-run software company, which joined with Vietnamese living in the Germany, so I had a good opportunity to acquire knowledge of the new technology. We had also made some applications, which were sold in the Germany market. However, the company failed finally. One of reasons of failure maybe is from the following.
I remember we could not directly make a call phone to foreigners, so to contact, we must wait for the post officers to connect on our behalf. The assisted connection took no less than 30 minutes to connect, and such a call's cost was too pricey.
The event which Cuba and the U.S. are approaching a diplomatic tie evokes my memories about the passed period of the economic embargo of the U.S. over Vietnam.
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