KZBlog

A quick anecdote that demonstrated to me why there are not more Internet users in Kazakhstan, why companies are not increasing connection speeds, why so few people have websites or blogs. I got a call from a company I work for under contract that they were being audited by the tax authorities and they needed my diplomas and some other documents to show (Apparently they need to prove I am qualified, thus justifying their hiring a foreigner, thus justifying why they pay to a foreign bank account, thus showing why they have some weird tax calculations in their books). I was just about to leave to go to a site for this very employer, but they insisted it was urgent. It would be okay to be late to work since I had to come into the head office to give them my documents.

I go in and hand over the documents to the project manager. I’m about to ask her when I can take them back when she starts copying them.
I say, “Oh, you just need copies?”
“Yes,” she says, “I’ll copy them quickly and you can go.”
“But I could have scanned and emailed them to you from the other office.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “We need hard copies.”
“You could have printed my scans,” I point out.
“Really? I didn’t know that.”

As long as people don’t appreciate the power of the Internet, there will not be much development because it won’t be seen as a serious tool that can make life more efficient. It will be seen only as a distraction or a toy or something imposed on people by the government and IT people.