The Philippine Online Chronicles

I write this at a moment unprecedented in all of human history.  We are living at the beginning of an age where each human being has been given the ability to express himself in ways no other generation has been before.  This, I hope is the beginning of understanding because the truth is, our presidential candidates do not have any inkling on what to do nor do our people realize where we are and what we could achieve with this power.

Tell me if you’ve heard this all before.

I imagine online life was simple back in the days when the Internet was young, back when the The Mentor and his kind discovered the computer, then traveled the electron, and the switch and started to marvel at the beauty of the baud. It was a more innocent time when data and information were sacrosanct. Meaning, in those the early days, the driving philosophy of Mentor and his kind was access to computers or anything that may teach something about how the world works should be unlimited and total.  They believed that art could be created on a computer and consented to this firm belief that Cyberspace can change your life for the better.

There is so much of Cyberspace, of the Internet that people don’t really understand.  Take for example the notion that in Cyberspace, on the Internet that governance or regulation or rules of any sort, doesn’t exist. You can not be more wrong. This is its ethos, its core philosophy, and its manifesto. This is the Tao: “We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.“

This is the Internet. It was born from the efforts of Vint Cerf, of Tim Berners-Lee, and many others, over the years. The Internet made possible and interconnected technologies like computers and mobile phones and has revolutionized how every human being on the planet converses with each other.  The Internet has transformed how information and knowledge is passed.  It has dramatically altered our media landscape making the Internet a massive delivery point.

The Internet has metamorphosed every culture and every idea, distilling it across continents and races.  It has leveled the playing field on every profession, on every discipline.

The Internet has given Voice to those who have little or none.  Thus, this unprecedented age has given each Human Being the ability to be both a producer and consumer of anything.

With this profound transformative ability, the Everyman becomes Super.

It is true, prior-to the coming of the Internet, prior-to it being popularized, information demanded that one pay homage to the gatekeepers.  It was too expensive to own a printing press, so the masses relied on those who could afford it, if they wanted to be published or to consume those publications.  Then came a time when it became too expensive to produce radio or television, because you needed massive broadcast towers to get across.  Regulation upon regulation, we have come to rely on these gatekeepers until eventually, everyone had to be careful to offend the unwashed masses.

What I seek to convey are these truths.

According to Jim Ayson:

Data released by Facebook in September 2009, show the Philippines ranked at #13 in terms of Facebook users, with 4,832,040 registered users. In Asia, we are second only to Indonesia, which registered 8,786,920 users.

But the growth period from January to September 2009 shows Pinoy Facebook population growing at a whopping 1136.76%. That is the second highest rate in the world, second only to Taiwan.

Current estimates of Philippine Facebook registered users put the number at around 5.7 Million.

Tonyo Cruz in a tweet, pointed to Nielsen Mobile Internet Usage.  The article reported that in early 2008, Nielsen Mobile reported that Mobile Internet Usage Penetration in the Philippines was 3.4%.

Momblogger Noemi Lardizabal-Dado wrote “Yahoo! & Nielsen First Ever Internet Habits Study for the Philippines,” and she noted, “more Filipinos, especially the younger population are favoring the Internet more than television and print.”  This is happening even as questions of how Internet Service Providers are slow and inept at providing bills just as they are in providing, reliable and fast Internet broadband.

Often the Internet is seen merely as a form of entertainment.  As Glee Willis once told Time about the Internet, “it’s a family place. It’s a place for perverts. It’s everything rolled into one.   There this is this notion that quite often, the Internet is seen as a waste of time, especially to be on Facebook or on Twitter.  Like any tool,  it can be used for both good and evil.

This is truth.  To Twitter is Democracy.

A flurry of tweets on Twitter flooded the Internet on May 2009 in protest of the The Great Book Blockade that the Arroyo Administration sought to pass.  Arroyo gave in, though it is largely lip service, some measure of victory can be tasted by that act.

A few days later as the nation woke, it was greeted by “Good Morning, Manila: The Assess have It.” The night before, Old Media that promised to inform the public failed in its duty to cover the House of Representatives as it passed resolution 1109 that sought to transform Congress into a Constituent Assembly.  Only Twitter remained, as @caffeinesparks was our eyes and ears in the Batasan.

Filipinos have been mostly lucky.

Like the Great Digital Divide that separates the connected and not connected, there is a great gulf between the real world and the Internet. As the Internet ever so increasingly become part of the real world, governments, and people naturally want to impose their own order. There is a huge disconnect between the ethos of the Internet and the real world.

In the streets of Tehran, as violence erupted, the world was stunned and Twitter became the life blood that connected Iran Election protesters with the rest of the world.  Few powers have sought to actively suppress the Internet the way Iran did.  Anonymous Iran and many others on the Internet sought to prove rise in their aid by providing time, resources and servers. Though the Powers of the Earth have thus far failed to act, Anonymous and the band of heroes continue to keep the information flowing.

The Day After Ondoy, Manila saw massive infrastructure collapse and mobile services that have sprung kept information going.  So even as text messages and cell towers were taxed, mobile broadband kept many on the Internet, happily tweeting information and coordinating relief.

This too is the state of Internet in the Philippines.

Many consumers complain about the unreliability and slow network performance. They complain of bills that needlessly charge them or overcharge them.  No matter what new technologies emerge that could potentially be useful for Filipinos and Filipino enterprise can mean very little with slow and unreliable network.  Filipinos cannot deploy and deliver good but bandwidth heavy content to other users across the globe and to Filipinos in country.  Slow network and terrible telecommunications company performance can mean loss of income and loss of revenue and loss of innovation by Filipinos.

That’s not all. As it stands, the Anti-Cybercrime law seeks to prevent women and children from being abused and exploited online.  Though however you think of Hayden Kho, the man was much a victim as the women in the video.  How then do we protect his right?  As we have seen from Iran, we must protect the individual’s right to stay online and to connect to sites that he wants to see.

It has become evident what the world would be like if governments sought to prevent people from using the Internet and Iran is that poster boy.

It is evident with the lack of infrastructure growth in spite of massive profit telecommunications companies are single points of failure in a long line of building blocks needed to continue innovation. How then does government balance fair play?

How then does society balance the needs of the individual for privacy and the needs of the state to prevent crime?

How then to do protect the Internet that triumph of humanity from vested interests threatening it?

We must learn from the lessons of the recent past that as control of key technologies fall into the hands of the few, as radio and television has, innovation is stifled.  People’s voices are less heard and democracy suffers.

For as long as Filipinos’ right to a reliable and fast Internet service based on what he has paid for is denied him then we are denying ourselves of innovation and growth.

This is why future Filipinos are in danger.  This is what future administrations must accomplish as it passes into law, a Freedom of Information Act.

This is what we must guarantee that every Filipino ought to experience.

This is what I hope the Next Administration would include on that laundry list of things that they ought to accomplish.

We must hold these five truths to be self-evident that a free nation such as the Philippines is expected by our people to have these simple inalienable rights:

1. 1. The Freedom to freely access Content, sites, platform of their choice;
   2. The Freedom to run Applications of their choice;
   3. The Freedom to Attach Personal Devices of their choice;
   4. The Freedom to have Online Privacy protected and to have no interference from a public authority except what is necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security, public safety or economic well-being of the nation for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others;
   5. The Freedom to receive reliable and fast Internet that is not unreasonably degraded by other traffic as much as to receive meaningful information regarding Service plans;

Let us join our friends from around the world as they take a similar position.

Make no mistake that this does not mean Internet should be free as beer.  Make no mistake that like expressways often require us to pay a fee to access it, so too will the Internet always be.  That’s important to know, isn’t it?  So as more Filipinos come online, as more of our people make the Internet a part of their life, let us affirm the Philippines’ commitment to ensure that Future Filipinos enjoy an Internet that is both Open and Free.

We must also remember that our questions in 1993 are still questions in 2009 and beyond. I say this with a degree of confidence because Time Magazine in 1993 had an article, which was written by Philip Elmer-Dewitt titled, “First Nation in Cyberspace.“  In that piece, Dewitt mentioned crackdowns on raunchier discussion groups on the Internet.

It is important to note that as Filipinos discuss anti-cybercrime laws, Internet Censorship and Rights as well as questions on Intellectual property.  That last one, as Lee put it, to solve we must “change the law to bring it back into line with peoples’ moral intuitions.”  As for censorship, this quote from John Gilmore of the Electronic Frontier Foundation is an axiom that also holds true: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

This is the challenge and opportunity that we face.  Let us join our running code with the rest of the world, and let us lead by example, nations of the world who largely remain clueless as we are now. Let us declare that the Filipino is for rough consensus and running code.  If Facebook is to connect; to Twitter is democracy, then Internet is a triumph of humanity.

This is why our presidential candidates need to take a hard look at the Internet and make it relevant to their future plan.  This is why the Internet is important to Filipinos.  This is why we need the Five Freedoms of Filipino Running Code.

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