Straight from the textbook
April 28, 2003 | 12:00am
So it’s been declared, the country is being mobilized. And though it isn’t in a paramilitary sense of course or a socio-civic quarantine against coronavirus, it still has everything to do with armies marching in and around civilian settlements. About a decade ago it would’ve caused one too many Filipinos to come running out in the street crying madness, maybe a bit of stone-throwing in consequence, but nowadays it’s hardly surprising to see everyone and their dog joining the fray.
The modern Filipino soldier from across corporate Makati to Valenzuela’s roaring factories, with a pair of tsinelas strapped to his feet and a badly imitated Fubu shirt hung around his upper body, is armed with none other than, yes – his cell phone complete with every conceivable accessory.
By 2002 it was recorded that Philippine cell phone subscribers hit an astounding 17 million users, a number that (with a little military training could literally take over most of Asia, if not Mindanao alone) is growing by over 300,000 subscribers a month. Now that may seem like a big number other than the fact that, well, it really is a big number.
Although analysts are hard pressed to put a number on the actual output of these cell phones, it has been estimated that over 100 million text messages are sent everyday in the country alone. And it almost seems fit, after being informally christened as the text capital of the world after the events that followed January, 2001 (although there has been some talk going about that the title is being challenged by a small, rural nation in Europe somewhere. But leave it to Filipinos to beat it to Guinness). The Philippines is indeed mobilized, wired and definitely marching to the same tune – or should we say – ringtone (E-Male’s favorites: Pagdating ng Panahon by Aiza Seguerra).
A little more than seven years ago, the cell phone was branded as an upper-middle class tool; lugged around by businessmen and their secretaries, by young entrepreneurs thinking it was actually worth the space in their clutch bags. (Though others seemed to think that by putting it in their side pant pocket, it made them look rather "ahem" big – many failed to draw the conclusion that it is their side pant pocket). Worse, E-Male remembers the time when yuppy wannabes like him tucked a pager with their Greenhills-fake trousers and bandied about their analog cell phone as a sign of upward mobility.
SMS (that’s Short Messaging Service to you yokels) during those days was never really meant to take off. The idea of typing your message down on a limited number of space with a keypad the size of a calculator (back then that was small), was never thought to be an "upside." The service was deemed far too laborious, taxing and too much of a hassle (which forces us to assume that Filipinos are either foolishly hardworking, or cleverly bored out of their wits – both perhaps). To companies, SMS was merely another feature to list down at the back of cell phone boxes. That, along with all the exaggerated bullet points and the flashy packaging which made Pocketbell, Easycall and Power Page the then gizmos of choice.
Though telecommunication companies initially provided text as a free (ah yes, we can actually remember that far back), the service was never really promoted. But when cell phone manufacturers took the chance of bringing the cell phone to the consumer level, cutting the astronomical prices to semi-astronomical prices, and trying harder than ever to make it smaller than ever, the local telecommunications landscape not only changed; it was terraformed beyond recognition.
So now we have armies upon armies of Filipinos volleying text messages at each other quicker than most of us can read them. Though numbers momentarily declined when service providers imposed the one-peso per text, the numbers quickly leveled off to what it was before the imposition. It’s admittedly odd, however, that during this "one-peso per text" scandal, Filipinos tried haphazardly to spark a text boycott. And the medium they used to spread the word? Text. E-Male even sued the cell phone companies angrily demanding a rebate.
But the cell phone has literally carved itself into our daily living. To be Filipino is to own a cell phone. And being a texter, a prerequisite to being Pinoy. A rather humorous but hardly unexpected scene is displayed in a new book published by the De La Salle University Press, entitled Txt-ing Selves, with a cover of a group of Ifugaos preoccupied with their own 5110s. From symbols of status to symbols of the status quo, the Pinoy has armed itself with a weapon of a different kind.
"Information is ammunition," or so the military axiom goes. And if text messages could kill, the Philippines had just about killed the whole world multiple times over – with a pack of prepaid cards to spare.
But as it so happens, everyone wants a piece of the battlefield. Telecommunication giants, Globe and Smart, are taking the struggle for subscribers to the next level; with aggressive advertising strategies and promotional gimmicks to make any politician proud. And if there weren’t any law against murder, executives would probably be all thumbs in plugging the other guy’s subscriber. The Philippines’ own gangs of New York if you will. Less violent, one would imagine, but surely not less chaotic.
Even the Gokongweis have decided to throw in the big guns for the long haul, only recently unveiling to the country the arrival of Sun Cellular, a whole new service that hopes to rival its bigger brothers for a piece of the telecommunication pie. A rather dramatic marketing strategy, confident in pulling an extra edge over the competitors by mercilessly cutting down on both text and call rates. All well and good, one would like to think, though a texter would still love to be able to text his Smart and Globe buddies just the same – a feature Sun Cellular is still trying to work out.
The downside of all this texting madness? It goes without saying that the lot of us unplug from our chargers, messages ready and cell phones blazing. And if it weren’t for the rates we would most likely be hooked on our cell phones like over-strung patients on morphine. Cell phones have moved from accessory to necessity, and although the text epidemic only came around during the mid ’90s, everyone (save for those grandfathers who still prefer the tranquility of isolation) cannot remember a time without it.
The average Pinoy would most probably deny his dependency on his cell phone. Surely not go so far as to call himself an "addict." But strip a Filipino of his cell phone and he will be no more than a wandering sheep on his way to Greenhills. Our little (and sometimes too little) Nokias and Ericssons have become an extension of our own bodies – a fifth limb so to speak. E-Male’s daddy is, however, immune to all these and sees through the impersonality of communicating through the keyboards. But then again, he belongs to another generation.
And with cell phone giants doing their own bit in trying to get ahead of themselves, they have done a spectacular job of cramming worthless yet highly amusing features into such tiny electronic boxes. Our fifth limb can now take pictures, send e-mail, surf the Web and playback music, aside from all the standard stuff (the alarm clock is the most underappreciated feature). And don’t we forget that it’s fully customizable.
The Philippines has just gotten smaller than it already is. Such a scenario used to seem preposterous in a geographical sense, but has become a virtual reality as of recent. Of course there are more disturbing things to worry about other than the country’s dependency on cell phones: fluctuating Western markets, volatile oil prices, an unfolding war, a potential pandemic and the fact that Filipinos spend more than P100 million worth of text, every day. So it goes without saying that the Filipino isn’t one to be messed with – ’cause we’re armed and dangerous.
E-mail E-Male at argee@justice.com.
The modern Filipino soldier from across corporate Makati to Valenzuela’s roaring factories, with a pair of tsinelas strapped to his feet and a badly imitated Fubu shirt hung around his upper body, is armed with none other than, yes – his cell phone complete with every conceivable accessory.
By 2002 it was recorded that Philippine cell phone subscribers hit an astounding 17 million users, a number that (with a little military training could literally take over most of Asia, if not Mindanao alone) is growing by over 300,000 subscribers a month. Now that may seem like a big number other than the fact that, well, it really is a big number.
Although analysts are hard pressed to put a number on the actual output of these cell phones, it has been estimated that over 100 million text messages are sent everyday in the country alone. And it almost seems fit, after being informally christened as the text capital of the world after the events that followed January, 2001 (although there has been some talk going about that the title is being challenged by a small, rural nation in Europe somewhere. But leave it to Filipinos to beat it to Guinness). The Philippines is indeed mobilized, wired and definitely marching to the same tune – or should we say – ringtone (E-Male’s favorites: Pagdating ng Panahon by Aiza Seguerra).
A little more than seven years ago, the cell phone was branded as an upper-middle class tool; lugged around by businessmen and their secretaries, by young entrepreneurs thinking it was actually worth the space in their clutch bags. (Though others seemed to think that by putting it in their side pant pocket, it made them look rather "ahem" big – many failed to draw the conclusion that it is their side pant pocket). Worse, E-Male remembers the time when yuppy wannabes like him tucked a pager with their Greenhills-fake trousers and bandied about their analog cell phone as a sign of upward mobility.
SMS (that’s Short Messaging Service to you yokels) during those days was never really meant to take off. The idea of typing your message down on a limited number of space with a keypad the size of a calculator (back then that was small), was never thought to be an "upside." The service was deemed far too laborious, taxing and too much of a hassle (which forces us to assume that Filipinos are either foolishly hardworking, or cleverly bored out of their wits – both perhaps). To companies, SMS was merely another feature to list down at the back of cell phone boxes. That, along with all the exaggerated bullet points and the flashy packaging which made Pocketbell, Easycall and Power Page the then gizmos of choice.
Though telecommunication companies initially provided text as a free (ah yes, we can actually remember that far back), the service was never really promoted. But when cell phone manufacturers took the chance of bringing the cell phone to the consumer level, cutting the astronomical prices to semi-astronomical prices, and trying harder than ever to make it smaller than ever, the local telecommunications landscape not only changed; it was terraformed beyond recognition.
So now we have armies upon armies of Filipinos volleying text messages at each other quicker than most of us can read them. Though numbers momentarily declined when service providers imposed the one-peso per text, the numbers quickly leveled off to what it was before the imposition. It’s admittedly odd, however, that during this "one-peso per text" scandal, Filipinos tried haphazardly to spark a text boycott. And the medium they used to spread the word? Text. E-Male even sued the cell phone companies angrily demanding a rebate.
But the cell phone has literally carved itself into our daily living. To be Filipino is to own a cell phone. And being a texter, a prerequisite to being Pinoy. A rather humorous but hardly unexpected scene is displayed in a new book published by the De La Salle University Press, entitled Txt-ing Selves, with a cover of a group of Ifugaos preoccupied with their own 5110s. From symbols of status to symbols of the status quo, the Pinoy has armed itself with a weapon of a different kind.
"Information is ammunition," or so the military axiom goes. And if text messages could kill, the Philippines had just about killed the whole world multiple times over – with a pack of prepaid cards to spare.
But as it so happens, everyone wants a piece of the battlefield. Telecommunication giants, Globe and Smart, are taking the struggle for subscribers to the next level; with aggressive advertising strategies and promotional gimmicks to make any politician proud. And if there weren’t any law against murder, executives would probably be all thumbs in plugging the other guy’s subscriber. The Philippines’ own gangs of New York if you will. Less violent, one would imagine, but surely not less chaotic.
Even the Gokongweis have decided to throw in the big guns for the long haul, only recently unveiling to the country the arrival of Sun Cellular, a whole new service that hopes to rival its bigger brothers for a piece of the telecommunication pie. A rather dramatic marketing strategy, confident in pulling an extra edge over the competitors by mercilessly cutting down on both text and call rates. All well and good, one would like to think, though a texter would still love to be able to text his Smart and Globe buddies just the same – a feature Sun Cellular is still trying to work out.
The downside of all this texting madness? It goes without saying that the lot of us unplug from our chargers, messages ready and cell phones blazing. And if it weren’t for the rates we would most likely be hooked on our cell phones like over-strung patients on morphine. Cell phones have moved from accessory to necessity, and although the text epidemic only came around during the mid ’90s, everyone (save for those grandfathers who still prefer the tranquility of isolation) cannot remember a time without it.
The average Pinoy would most probably deny his dependency on his cell phone. Surely not go so far as to call himself an "addict." But strip a Filipino of his cell phone and he will be no more than a wandering sheep on his way to Greenhills. Our little (and sometimes too little) Nokias and Ericssons have become an extension of our own bodies – a fifth limb so to speak. E-Male’s daddy is, however, immune to all these and sees through the impersonality of communicating through the keyboards. But then again, he belongs to another generation.
And with cell phone giants doing their own bit in trying to get ahead of themselves, they have done a spectacular job of cramming worthless yet highly amusing features into such tiny electronic boxes. Our fifth limb can now take pictures, send e-mail, surf the Web and playback music, aside from all the standard stuff (the alarm clock is the most underappreciated feature). And don’t we forget that it’s fully customizable.
The Philippines has just gotten smaller than it already is. Such a scenario used to seem preposterous in a geographical sense, but has become a virtual reality as of recent. Of course there are more disturbing things to worry about other than the country’s dependency on cell phones: fluctuating Western markets, volatile oil prices, an unfolding war, a potential pandemic and the fact that Filipinos spend more than P100 million worth of text, every day. So it goes without saying that the Filipino isn’t one to be messed with – ’cause we’re armed and dangerous.
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