High technology is good, but very fragile!

Today is supposedly the 60th Anniversary of Philippine Independence. I say supposedly because during the time of Pres. Diosdado Macapagal, he changed the course of history and moved our date to celebrate Independence Day to June 12th. Like it or not, there are still many of us who continue to believe that the Philippines, like the United States, was born in the 4th of July. Holding it on June 12th only brought historical confusion. In the United States, today they are celebrating the 230th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States in 1776 there's no confusion there.

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My sincere apologies if our column didn't appear yesterday. It is not because I didn't write a column. As a matter of fact, I did. Gone are the days when columnists can get away for a quiet weekend without any cares in the world. With the new high technology and the Internet, we can make columns from anywhere in the world and email it to The Freeman. So as I was about to send my column via my Nokia 9500, I had a difficulty accessing to the Globe Internet. It was only late that night that I learned of the technical problems that Globe Telecom was having last Sunday.

Actually, after the Regional Development Council's (RDC-7) Full Council meeting in Tagbilaran, Bohol last Friday, Eng. Pericles Dakay and his brother Pet invited me to go with them to Ubay, Bohol to meet up with our old friends, Felix Gochan and Mr. Jeffrey Ouano to visit his farm. I took this as a golden opportunity to see that side of Bohol, far from the madding crowd and a good opportunity for me to see the Ubay Animal Stock farm and the irrigation dam of the National Irrigation Department. Later we went to the Island of Pres. Carlos P. Garcia where the Transco submarine cable is connected to the island of Leyte.

Last Sunday, I dropped by the two Internet Cafés in Ubay. The first one only had kids playing Internet games and the second one had women chatting with who knows who. But the people in charge of these Internet Cafés didn't know what a flash disk is, which means that they are not really up to speed with new computer technologies. Hence, I was forced to make a column in my cellphone and when I was finished that's when I experienced connecting problems to Globe Internet.

I had an inkling that something was amiss when my friend texted me, complaining that I sent him 20 texts when in truth I only sent it once. Since I was in Bohol, my thoughts raced to the possibility that Globe Telecom's cellsites must have been attacked as usual by the New People's Army (NPA); after all, the Communists have targeted Globe Telecom for their continued refusal to pay "Revolutionary Taxes".

I called up Globe's PR Relations Head Jones Campos yesterday to get the story from the horse's mouth. What he told me was, there was a cable break somewhere in Panay and this was still under investigation. While this break may not be NPA related, who knows, it could be caused by fishermen using dynamite fishing methods? Mr. Campos told me that the media would be given the results of this investigation.

What is clear here is that, this problem affected the backbone line of Globe that traverses between Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. This gives us an idea that no matter how high-tech these lines are it is still fragile and easy enough for terrorist groups to disrupt this line and disrupt our daily lives. I'm sure that there are a lot of redundancies in their systems, but perhaps what they need to study is now to strengthen this backbone line.

No doubt millions of Globe subscribers experienced the technical problems because of this break in the cable. After all, the cellphone has become an integral part of the life of many people. In fact, I just read in the Nation Page of the Philippine Star yesterday a report that said, "Cellphones now an integral part of gov't R&D network". So when our service provider suffers a technical glitch, many of us also suffer with it.

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Did I read it right that former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona has called for "Civil Disobedience" if Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) is not impeached? That's the whole trouble with old politicos like Guingona who ought to retire from politics. Their kind of politics is politics of destruction where they cannot even wait for the coming elections, which is already slated to come next year.

Civil disobedience was a tool we once used against the Marcos dictatorship because the Filipino people had no other recourse because he stubbornly clings to power. But this is not so in the case of Pres. Arroyo. Hence, his call for civil disobedience would only fall into the ears of those who want to grab political power. Fortunately, Mr. Guingona has lost so much of his charisma and political luster, no one believes him anymore.

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