Technology for empowerment

HONG KONG – What did we ever do, Ines Perez de Rada asked me in Madrid, before the iPhone?

Ines, a lawyer who works for Spain’s Fundacion Carolina, was my highly efficient and knowledgeable guide and interpreter during my visit to Madrid and Barcelona.

All throughout, she and her iPhone were inseparable. Apart from texting and making phone calls, she would take photos and email them ASAP. She accessed the Internet on her phone, googling and poking and enlarging file photos when I asked for an English translation of “bellota.” That’s the fruit or acorn from a member of the oak tree family. Spain’s bellota-fed black pigs are the source of one of the world’s most expensive hams, the jamon Iberico bellota (68 euros per kilo, or up to 600 euros per leg – about P36,000). The bellota diet makes the delectable slices of “pata negra” free of bad cholesterol, I was told, so any oil oozing from the ham is good for you. Or maybe the Spaniards just developed a good excuse to pig out on jamon Iberico. 

In any case, Ines found photos of the bellota tree, plus the free-range black pigs, on her iPhone while we were on a cab ride to the Madrid headquarters of Spain’s IT giant Indra.

With the iPhone and its androids, Filipinos are also discovering the immense trove of information that can now be carried in one’s purse. The only problem, as in the case of my iPhone, is that our service providers have not yet perfected the Internet service for the new gadgets, and my phone’s wireless Internet access is often riddled with glitches especially when used overseas.

Still, there’s no turning back in the IT revolution. Here in Hong Kong where I am attending the maiden gathering of the newly formed Global Editors Network (GEN), the talk is all about visual journalism and the new platforms for traditional newspapers: tablets led by Apple’s iPad, and yes, the iPhone and its androids.

The new technology is revolutionizing our lives, from the way we absorb news and spread information to the way we shop, travel and do business.

The new technology can also boost basic public services at reasonable costs, allowing governments, for example, to provide better education and health care to the poor. Internet-enabled phones can be a powerful tool for learning. Through computers, experts can impart their knowledge regularly to students in remote communities without needing to take arduous trips.

Companies such as Indra have developed software to allow diagnosis and treatment of illnesses of patients hundreds of kilometers away from the physician.

In China earlier this year, I watched several doctors working on large electronic monitors, directing complicated surgeries in real time several cities away. China is increasingly turning to “telemedicine” to augment health care in its remote areas.

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Technology has also been a boon to national security and public safety.

In Spain, with a population of 47 million, Francisco Javier Velazquez, director general of the police and guardia civil, has 155,727 personnel under his command. Local governments have 66,425 cops while the autonomous regions have 81,283 more. After the bombing of the Madrid subway system in March 2004, the capital set up the Madrid Security and Emergency Integrated Center, with Indra providing video surveillance and communications technology in tourist areas and critical infrastructure in the city.

The company also provides border surveillance sensors for ground, sea and air. This is ideal for countries like the Philippines with pitifully few ships and reconnaissance planes to patrol coastal areas in 7,100 islands.

Technology can of course also be misused. One of the GEN topics here in Hong Kong is the fate of journalism following the phone hacking scandal that brought down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World in London.

In the Philippines, as far as I know, journalists are the ones whose phones are tapped by the state and other groups, not the other way around.

The Internet has also been a boon to the flesh trade and human traffickers. Obviously, like any tool, technology can be used for good or bad, but generally, the Internet has been beneficial to the world. It has revolutionized the flow of information the way the printing press did in 1440, making knowledge accessible to the masses.

Knowledge is power, and millions of Filipinos lack that empowerment. Today tools for this empowerment are available, and we should make full use of them.

We’ve seen the hunger of people to be connected, to communicate and process information. The mobile phone is ubiquitous even in poor communities and social networking sites are immensely popular – another GEN topic here in Hong Kong. Among the first purchases of the poor, when they start making money, is a cell phone. Many stolen phones are not passed on to fences but are actually used by the thieves themselves.

Those left behind in this information revolution may never be able to catch up. When this happens to the majority of the population, it stunts national productivity and competitiveness. The government must now allow this to happen. Knowledge must be a basic right, not a luxury.