stop over on the highway

5:59am: 1329 Antonio St., Sampaloc, Manila. i was lying in bed disturbed by the alarm from my camera phone equipped with Bluetooth application, powered by Java, and is registered to unlimited texting. 10:17am: Computer No. 43, Internet Section, UST Miguel De Benavides Library. here i am blogging, using fast internet that is, although non-wi-fi, very convinient. whatever happens next, im sure, will have something to do with "The Highway." but what is the highway? is it this long, connecting road leading to the northern or southern part of luzon where toll gates ask for a fee greater than a satisfying full lunch? is it this humungous concrete where bumper-to-bumper catastrophes occur, if not daily, hourly because of fast driven automobiles? is it this array of lined, asphalted lanes that bring peoples either together or apart? whatever. it's obvious that i'm pertaining to what irving fang considered as the information highway. yes, that highway. uh-huh. the one you link to satellites, computers, the oh-so-reliable internet, those original--and err--pirated (read: guilt) dvd's, and who can forget what Filipinos are known for, the cellphone. late last night, i was browsing through the copy of fang's book. and id love to quote mark poster, "I cannot consider myself centered in my rational, autonomous subjectivity or bordered by a defined ego, but I am disrupted, subverted and dispersed across social space." is this highway beneficial? does it do good? hear me out. (based on the three important areas of the information highway.) 1. it provides new media and more communication choices. duh! with just the birth of the already obsolete N5110, we've all obviously observed the enlarged capacity for communication. with the development of e-mail (now G-mail even!), we've been able to talk to aliens from another continent. with the dvds and cds and such, we've come to acquire movie moments that we can actually pause. fun, yeah? but think. back then, when mobile phones were not in use, how did courtship take place? face-to-face. how did people do business? personally. how did scholars study? in classrooms. where did we enjoy blockbusters? movie houses. with the aid of the birth of new technology in the sixth information revolution, we've all observed the decreasing need for personal contact. what happened to love letters? we now call them love quotes. sure, these do have advantages. i totally agree! i have nothing against them anyway. it's just sad (for me, at least) to see how people begin to neglect the value of actually being visible. you can never be too careful. 2. it is interactive. as we have learned to use these innovations, we've began to embrace control over what is presented. besides, with the use of internet, it's not that hard to do homework given a million of choices, right? with the wide range of music genres, films and such, we learned to choose what we actually want. we are given a choice, a chance to participate. and i love that fact. not only does it make us more competitive in terms of global knowledge that WAS only accessible by perspiring your way through piles of dusty, hardbound, not to mention heavy books, it makes us literate of knowledge--much more easily. 3. it makes distant connections to personal activities. we hated waking up early to go to school. we grew lazy of dressing up for the supermarket (maybe because we'd love to be in pajamas all day). we learned to be not impulsive of watching movies in theaters for more than a hundred bucks thinking they wouldn't be worth it. activities became handy. as in handy. school was done through computer monitors (shout out to EdTech:D). shopping already has eBay written all over it. and the movies, who could not love dvd's. convinience is the word! yes? i give much thanks to the people who have thought of these new ideas. they're genuine great minds thinking alike! and we, who get to use these, though we, too, think alike, are actually, at some point, could think great as well. we love technology. we love networking. we love easy access to things that were not that accessible. we love being in the know. but sometimes, we go over board of embracing too much of these that we tend to let go of the value of humans. nothing against technology, again. it is confusing to think of the irony that while the purpose of this highway is to fastly connect all people of all races, age and sex together, we unconsciously go otherwise. we go apart. taking this course, i've learned that media users were supposed to be self-defined. probably, that's my favorite idea. i've been attending media seminars in high school that were held in major universities and all they had to say was that media was deceiving. now, i prove them wrong. it (media/mass communications/technological innovations) wouldn't be deceiving if you wouldn't want to be deceived. we should be wise, responsible, careful of our actions. we do not let irrational things shape us because come to think of it, we have shaped them in the first place. is there a chance to alter this irony? 11:05am: still sitting in front of Computer No. 43 inside the UST Miguel De Benavides Library's Internet Section, thinking. pondering. God bless us all.