ABSTRACT
This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first the history of the Brazilian Informatics Policy (BIP) is recounted, from its origins to its end, focusing on the evolution of its objectives, instruments and the political alliances which supported and opposed the policy. It is based on the literature (notedly, Bastos 1992; Dantas 1988; Gaio 1992, Piragibe 1985; Schmitz and Hewitt 1992), on interviews with policy-makers and on first-hand experience. The second section is more analytical and tries to explain the fate of BIP. It begins by restating the ‘model’ of BIP and then proceeds to discuss its assumptions, first the technical and economic assumptions and the problems it met in its attempt to manage the technological gap and then the values and interests at stake and how it failed to retain social support. The last section comments on some of the results of BIP.
