Poke You!

I’m a little upset at facebook. People seem to prefer announcing things via their status messages in facebook to the extent that they will no longer inform you personally of truly important messages. My friend, Melissa, is now based in San Diego. She has been there for seven or so years already. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to her best friend, Kathy, and I found out that Melissa apparently got engaged to Luis, her boyfriend. When I showed surprise, Kathy quipped, “Don’t you check your facebook?” Really, it’s not a big deal but it ticked me off that I wasn’t informed personally, being that she has been my kabarkada since college.

What’s funny is some people are more comfortable communicating in the cyberworld than in the real world even to real friends. It’s somehow easier to say “how you doin?” in the net than in actual life. In real life you just nod your head or raise your eyebrows to acknowledge the person. In the cyberworld, you’re forced to use words… well not really, you can actually choose to just “poke” them.

I know where you live.

Check out this site: http://www.yugatech.com/blog/telecoms/is-our-privacy-protected-by-the-telcos/

It talks about how someone received a text from a person he had a grudge against which contained his number and location a.k.a. “I know where you live”. The sender apparently has a friend working at a telco and telcos have a service that can track a person down by triangulating a cellphone’s signal.

The question raised was that if GPS-tracking via cell tower triangulation can just be accessed and used by anyone inside the telco (free to be distributed to family and friends), what protection against invasion of privacy do we have?

So what protection is there? I’m pretty sure telcos have company policy that prohibits disclosure of personal information. Failing that, inform the telco of the breach. If you’re ignored, want to ruffle some feathers, and are willing to go thru the hassle, sue the telco.

What’s the use of the triangulation service, anyway? Other than for emergency situations, I don’t see the point of telcos offering the service commercially. Do you? Talk about invasion of privacy.

Twittered News

It seems the days of news-blogging has come to an end. Twitter has been showing promise as a reporting medium. A free service also called a micro-blog, it allows for posts with fewer than 140 characters. The big difference between this and other mini-feeds like that on Friendster, Facebook and the like, is that there are no privacy restrictions, advertisements, nor guidelines on what items can be posted.

Twitter has become so popular in delivering news items. Obama, the Dalai Lama, Emma Watson run the range of personalities who use twitter to update their fans and followers. The first image of the Hudson River plane crash was uploaded on Twitter before others broke the news. Most recently, a British snowboarder's rescue and untimely demise were monitored over Twitter.

I find myself drawn to Twitter. It takes a mere cellphone to post a message in seconds. I believe this surge in popularity could revolutionize how we receive news today.

ICT Issues Concerning the Right to Reply Bill

These past few days, the country has witnessed the revival of the heated debate concerning the infamous right-to-reply bill with its impending passage as a law. Journalists all over the country have made a united stand against it claiming that the bill is an act of terrorism against them. The newsmakers' opposition to the proposed law have caused some lawmakers to take a softer line in their support of the bill.

I myself is against the bill's passage. I believe that the bill violates the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press and that it constitutes an unlawful taking of private property.

Aside from these legalistic arguments, I also believe that the bill is a bad ICT policy decision. Should the bill be passed as a law, it will cause clogging of media channels to the point of restricting its use by legitimate channel users such as businessmen seeking to advertise their products etc. as well as to other people in posting obituaries for their late relatives. I am not saying that people who felt that they were maligned by mediamen have no valid and legitimate right to vindicate their names. I just believe that the law is not the least restrictive means in promoting their concerns.


Raymond R. Roque
06-78143

A Cashless Society

Nowadays, we’ve seen the boom in cashless transactions. From checks to credit cards, people have become less reliant on coins and notes. Due to advances in technology, I believe that the next trend be in the form of electronic cash.

In the Philippines, it is popularly known as “G-Cash,” a service offered by Globe (other networks have created their own version of such service too) wherein an ordinary sim card contains an electronic wallet. It acts like a debit card and one would simply use funds from the e-wallet for everyday transactions. With a push of a button, a seller/vendor is instantly paid as if real cash was transferred.

This new technology is quite simple but highly useful. To increase the usage of this technology would greatly reduce our government’s costs in producing traditional forms of money. It would also enable users to keep a better track on their spending. But most importantly, it has limitless applications. It could replace ATMs or employers may utilize it in paying their workers. In the end, the ease and convenience of such technology would drive the flow of Philippine commerce.

The only problem lies with the anxiety that such dependency would greatly encourage the stealing of mobile phones. Nonetheless, the benefits surely outweigh any possible grievances that the general public may face.

Thank you for not Calling

I’ve had more than my fair share of unwanted calls. Having been a loyal Suncellular subscriber since its first year of operation, I understand all too well that unlimited calls provides many opportunities for abuse. There’s a reason I don’t answer calls when it’s from an unknown number, especially if it’s a Sun number. There’s that great chance it’s another desperate and lonely person looking for absolutely anyone who will actually be crazy enough to want to be his phone pal. Just this weekend, I was caught offguard and I answered a call from an unknown Sun number. I was actually expecting a call from a friend who was on vacation and I figured he may have borrowed someone else’s phone. As I had feared, it was this random guy asking to be my friend in the creepiest voice imaginable. I immediately ended the call, feeling already violated from that 10-second encounter. Unfortunately, he has not stopped calling. I get an average of 6 missed calls a day from this number, at the most inconvenient hours of the day. I didn’t even bother calling Suncellular for any assistance anymore. I already did this before and much to my chagrin, apparently, they do not block calls. And so, it seems that people like me who want to live in peace and want to be protected from such incidents will just have to grin and bear it. My friend, a Globe-subscriber who has had a far worse experience of an ex-boyfriend turned stalker calling her incessantly, called Globe to ask for the guy’s number to be blocked from calling her phone. Much to her inconvenience, she was asked to personally go to the office and prove her claim. Due to regulations and whatnot, the company claims they cannot just easily block off numbers and the process was rather tedious such that she opted to just have her phone number changed.

I am on day 4 of receiving unwelcome calls from this person who obviously has nothing better to do with his sorry life. Thankfully, my brother is one very resourceful person. He obtained this software which allows one to block certain numbers, such that the cellphone won’t even ring when these blocked numbers call. The missed call will just be registered in one’s phone log. If it was that simple, please, somebody just explain to me why the telecommunications giants made it seem as difficult as performing brain surgery. Service-providers need to put a little heart and thought into their business. There are legitimate concerns of consumers that need concrete solutions -- not motherhood statements, and certainly not feel-good commercials of “connecting people” “24/7.” That just won’t cut it. It’s times like these when we ought to take matters into our own hands.

The Effect of Poverty on the Use of Technology (Part 2)

There are numerous factors that affect the flow of market forces. To name a few, some of these are population, GDP of the area, access to the area through physical transportation, possibility of continuation of business.

What poverty does is to suck in a vicious cycle of lack of access and lack of investments the inhabitants of a particular area. I define poverty here in terms of geographic limitations to develop my discussion of its effect on remote and rural areas, which I suppose are not as technologically advanced as their urban counterparts.

I asked myself, when I was a kid, why do people need or want to move to Metro Manila to search for a job to sustain their way of living? (I grew up in Bani, Pangasinan, when it was not yet as developed today). The answer, it seems, was due to the slow traffic of investments towards my childhood hometown. And this slow traffic, coupled with the information that rural people gather from urbanized areas (i.e. about the vast opportunities, their different and somehow envied way of living), created the idea that life in more technologically advanced places would be easier.

In a way, this is true. Life is easier with technology helping us in our day to day lives. However, with technology at hand, life becomes different from what we were used to (unless we already grew up in such a set-up). And this difference makes life with technology complicated.

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Rivera, Jan Michael A.
02-16779