I’m sure many people caught the 13-minute “60 Minutes” piece last Sunday on Brazil. CBS has since uploaded it to Youtube.
Brazil, Rising Star – 60 Minutes
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Tag Archives: brazil
This is Brazil, On Facebook.
That’s supposed to reference the old but famous ‘don’t do drugs’ commercial (this is your brain on drugs). While I’m not a Facespacer or a Mybooker, I do find the concept of socialness viewed alone through a piece of hardware to be quite interesting. The picture below is a product of a Facebook engineer who decided to graph social connections worldwide via Facebook. I cut out (I mean, I only included) South America but you can see the whole world, too. Each blue line represents a “friendship”.
The Speed of Brazil’s Internet
An article was just published on the tech site Royal Pingdom about worldwide Internet speeds and there are some interesting graphs that accompany the article. While you may click on that link and see the full charts, I thought I’d give a breakdown of the country speeds in terms of the slowest, fastest and how both the US and Brazil measure up. The number in parenthesis next to each country name refers to the size of the country in terms of Internet users.
I wonder how the correlation is between frustration of using the Internet in the slowest country (Iran, in this case) and deciding to partake in other activities in light of the frustration. For example, would an adolescent choose to play outside rather than wait for a webpage to load? Of course it presumes that the adolescent’s family has a computer, nonetheless, it would be interesting to see data on how limited connection speeds (or even censorship) might give rise to more fulfilling activities.
Overall Speed
Worldwide Averages
Connection Speed Distribution
Hard-pressed to find good press
Ever since the rise of the digital age (I can’t speak for how it was before then), Brazil has received bad press in the media. You know, stories on violence, corruption and who-knows-what-else. For lack of a better term, that’s not ‘news’ to anyone. Same thing with Colombia, although I would argue Colombia gets it worse. As of recent, the positive press on Brazil has increased, which is not to say the bad press has decreased, and we can attribute it to the World Cup 2014 as well as the Olympics of 2016, both of which will take place in Brazil. The problem with this ‘positive’ press is that it still barely nicks the surface of what the positives in Brazil really are. You might see an article on caipirinhas, samba and beach life or perhaps something on the Portuguese language itself (as can be found in the newspaper The Guardian for Feb. 11th).
In one sense, I get it, I do…people these days just don’t have the patience to sit down and take in a longer, more in-depth piece (unless it’s on Gangs in Rio’s Favelas, of course). In another sense, I’m quite satisfied with the knowledge that among us bloggers, there exists enough real information, enough of the good stuff, to quench the thirst of any budding Brazilianist out there.
The point of good press though is to be able to grab new readers, to expose them to some place or idea that they may not have considered before. It seems either the bloggers need to be thrust towards the spotlight or the “real” reporters need to up their game because what is coming out of the woodwork these days isn’t cutting it.
Fast-talking popsicle seller
Just don’t ask for the “de quê” flavor…
Should Brazil ban Avatar?
Luciana from Street Smart Brazil shared an article from the Huffinton Post with me called “Avatar: Should Brazil ban the film?” (ironic because I saw Avatar in Brazil, more specifically the Amazon region).
Here’s the part on Brazil (half the article is on China pulling the film)
“What came to mind as I watched the film wasn’t China, but Brazil. The Na’vi live in a glorious tropical rainforest that is reminiscent of the biodiversity-rich Amazon, and the on-screen people’s ties to their homeland is as respectful and culturally unique as that of the real tribal peoples who call our planet’s greatest rainforest home. Sadly, the threats to the Amazon are real: more than 100 large dams are planned for the basin, which also faces logging, mining, and clearing for agriculture.
The Brazilian government bears some resemblance to the movie’s corporate raiders. Its plans to sell off the mighty river to the highest bidder will result in forced evictions and drastic disruptions of cultures and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people. The Amazon is as threatened as the Na’vi’s land, and many Amazonian tribes have made it clear they will fight for their homelands.
It’s probably a good thing for Lula’s government that most Amazonian tribal people can’t just run down to the corner multiplex to catch this flick; it might unleash a flood the government just can’t dam.”
LAN Houses (Cyber Cafes)
Here in Brazil, when you need to use the internet and dont have a computer, you can walk into any of the LAN Houses (cyber cafes) in just about every half-modern city.
When you enter, you tell the person at the front that you want to use a computer (unless you are 16 years old and are there to play Playstation with your friends and yell the whole time about who is beating who). The attendant will ask you how long you wish to use it and sometimes he or she will ask a question which might make you tilt your head a bit. They might ask, “você quer com web?” (do you want it with web?) and by ‘web’ they don’t mean the internet, but rather a webcam.
Now, either the place will have the time set in the bottom corner of the screen (such as in FedEx in the USA) and the clock counting down to zero or they will have a notebook where they make note of when you came in and how long you still have.
There was talk in Brazil recently of officially registering all users by writing down their name and ID number (which would later be given to the gov’t) to monitor web traffic ‘for our protection’ (ha-ha) but as of this point, it hasn’t come into effect as far as I can tell (and I use LAN Houses frequently).
If you use MSN, you’ll probably see a picture of a young man with his shirt off posing for the camera as the profile picture of the last person to use it but don’t mind that, just enter your details and sign on.
As for the web…I mean the net, Chrome and Firefox are widely used as browsers and the computers are always using Windows. In terms of prices per hour, it depends on where you are but where I am (in a smaller city), I pay 25 cents per hour but there are places in the same city that charge 50 cents per hour. In the city of Rio, I remember paying something like US$1-1.50 per hour back in 2005 so who knows if it has increased or not.
Internet access up 75% in Brazil (in 3 yrs)
“The percentage of Brazilians, who are 10 years or older, that are online increased 75.3% in the last 3 years, going from 20.9% in 2005 to 34.8% in 2008 (or 56 million users), the Brazilian Institution of Geography and Statistics stated on Friday.
The increase occurred just as much among men (21.9% in 2005 to 35.8% in 2008) as it did among women (from 20.1% to 33.9%). Last year, the utilization was larger among the youth: those between 15 and 17 years old registered the highest percentage (62%) of people that went online and also they represented the group with the highest increase in the last three years (when it was at 33.7%).”
- Source (more here, in PT)
Digital Inclusion w/o a quick connection?
“Is there a point in discussing the digital inclusion when you don’t have a high-speed connection? Governments and everyone else are talking about how to universalize high-speed access, while Brazil is still moving slowly.
There’s a Brazil that can’t manage to watch Youtube, that doesn’t have a Facebook profile, that can’t follow the happenings of Twitter and wouldn’t even dream of signing up for Google Wave. It signs-on to MSN, but first it needs 9 hours to download the program – if the connection doesn’t fail first. It’s the disconnected Brazil – or 94.2% of our country.” – Source (translation by me)
My Take
Ok, I get it. Everyone in the world needs to be on the same globalized page, with the same opportunities…to receive their bread and circuses. I mean, what’s the point in giving us a shiny toy racecar if what’s under the hood is the equivalent of a Jalopy? Playing aside, what we have been given is a world in which it is increasingly unthinkable to exist without a computer at your side or in your pocket. The former of which I could be charged, tried and convicted. Convicted but not anywhere near convinced that such a world will lead to anything good. Pick your poison then, either be given your opinions through traditional media or experience a loss of privacy through new media (media, which just means ‘medium’ or middle, meaning we’re all kept on the same page).
When parkour goes soft
I’m thinking quite a lot of people have heard of or seen parkour but what about it’s laid-back cousin, street training? Yes, that’s right, if you are not daring enough to attempt l’art du déplacement then there’s another way you can interact with your surroundings and it’s called street training (what is it called if you become an expert?).
It seems to have started in London and picked up across the pond in none other than Brazil. After seeing a few videos on Youtube, I’m no longer sure it should be called the lazy off-shoot of parkour but rather the chilled-out version of flash mobs…or is it the walking man’s idea of the laying down game? Oh I’m not sure anymore…you crazy kids, you!
