It’s amazing how things are changing…

I remember when I managed to get my 2400 bps modem working with the Connect or Die BBS… late 80s, early 90s. I almost cried when I saw the small colored characters appearing on my screen. It was slow, but back then 1200 bps was normal. Even a text page took time to load, but it was worth it. The worst part was waking up in the middle of the night because the Mingo BBS only worked at that hour. We’re in Brazil, where monopolies were the norm, and phone lines were a luxury. My family had negotiated a phone line from 6 pm to midnight.

There was only one line available, and the maximum connection time was limited to an hour per day. The upload/download ratio rules applied (you had to send things to download…).

Images were in 320x200 with incredible 256 colors. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a VGA monitor; instead, I had an EGA card with a CGA-colored monitor. A combination that I made sure to forget how to set up. But the monitor did 640x200, and the card did something like 16 colors. In fact, the card did up to 640x350… but my poor monitor couldn’t handle it.

Then came BitNet and a friend who programmed FTP batches from the Internet at the University (the connection there was an astonishing 9600 bps) to download some more interesting files. By 1994, we were using 14,400 bps modems, but we suffered from lightning strikes. To this day, I turn off my computer if I hear thunder and avoid using it on rainy days. My uncle managed to buy an hour of Internet at the Mandic BBS in São Paulo… he had to pay the long-distance charge, plus $30 per hour (I think). Our goal was to download a naval engineering program that he saw in an English magazine. The problem was that the file was huge… 250 Kb. We spent several hours downloading the program, but incredibly it came from England to our floppy disks.

Today, I was informed that they’re selling Internet at 50 Mb/s in France. I’m imagining the possible applications for so much bandwidth and remembering what we went through to download small files. In Japan, things seem even better. But 50 Mb/s is a lot of bandwidth.

Reminding me of “Piracy for What,” I value my time more. Initially, I thought it would be great to download large quantities of MP3s, DVDs, and collections with 1,200 books and the like. Then I remembered past experiences with smaller files and what happened… and I gave up on the idea.

What really worries me is the Internet Divide. In some parts of Brazil, we already have fast Internet, but most people can’t reach 1 Mb/s. I remember when I was in the jungle last year; I struggled to get a poor ADSL connection at 600 Kb/s working. When it worked, it was good for browsing, but bad for downloading files. And if there was a problem, you could be sure it would take a week to fix.

These types of restrictions limit our use of the Internet. The Internet Divide becomes clearer and clearer, and we’re further away from developed countries.

I follow my kids using the Internet today. No static pages! They want videos and online music. I remember when this was really difficult in the jungle. To see a video, you had to download it first. Even banners now play videos. I don’t forget my daughter, head down, waiting for the Flash page on Barbie’s website to load. The reload/refresh button was something she already knew how to use.

But the big problem with the Internet Divide is that we won’t be included in future waves of remote work and outsourcing. When I worked in Brazil, I remember meetings where we had to explain our 400 ms latency… unthinkable in the US or Germany. Even back then, it prevented us from using VoIP. Skype improved things, but we’re still behind. When will the Internet stop being seen as a luxury item and become as important as electricity?

I come from a city of 1.5 million people, but we’re geographically isolated and excluded from the digital world.

Looking at the present, I understand how we fell behind in other waves of development. We took time to have schools for everyone. We took time to realize that a country needs serious policies to grow. We still haven’t explored our immense human potential. People excluded by poverty and ignorance…

Internet isn’t luxury. Internet isn’t everything. But Internet is very important. The speed of a channel and its price can decide whether to install a new business in a city or country. Businesses create employment and wealth. Access to information should be taken more seriously.