ABSTRACT
In 2015, the government of Cuba revamped Wi-Fi parks across the nation to quickly provide public access to the Internet. As Cubans came online, entering a mature Internet landscape accessed via Wi-Fi parks, users and non-users began to navigate, establish, and define the affordances and limits of the process of Wi-Fi park Internet access and adoption. Drawing from domestication theory and actor-network theory (ANT), this chapter seeks to map what the process of Internet access and adoption looks like in the early days of the Cuban Internet in 2017 to understand how different groups of Cubans react to the limitations of the network of services to comprise the Cuban Internet. The findings highlight the political, personal, and perceived social impositions of expectations and limitations of use. From businesses built around Wi-Fi parks, to alegal channels of communication to form a Cuban intranet, to reselling hacked access of the cheaper state-controlled Internet to allow unmonitored access, to general use in public park settings, informants began to reveal a holistic picture of Internet use, entrepreneurial activity, and motivations and aspirations for non-standard, alegal practices. From a theoretical perspective, this chapter will serve as a case study to explore the theoretical underpinnings from both British and Norwegian domestication, ANT, combined frameworks, and the evolution of domestication as a concept in contemporary contexts from a networked domestication perspective.
