PICS Directors Induction with Loren Legarda
Foreground, left to right: Senator Loren Legarda, PICS Chairwoman Maan Tolentino, myself, and first Filipino blogger Lauren Dado. Photo by Noemi Dado.
Thanks to everyone who came to the induction of the new Philippine Internet Commerce Society directors at the Peninsula Manila Hotel last night. Senator Loren Legarda, who swore us in, is pretty and feisty as ever. Noemi Dado posts more pretty pictures. Please tag your videos, photos, and articles about the event pics07 so we can all find them.
This is PICS’ tenth year, and my third term as vice-president. A lot of what we called emerging information technologies two years ago are standard online services today. I’m glad to see geekery mainstreamed so quickly; that just lets us geek over more new stuff. Yes, Jayvee, Hell is freezing over and over and over again — and it’s cool.
Thanks for the birthday bash Mike… errrr… the invitation pala haha. At least I was forced to go out and dress up on my birthday! Good luck in your plans for your committee! You know where to find me if ya need me!
congratulations mike. i hope you’re projects succeed. more power
Aileen: Of course I know where to find you, birthday girl. I can Google you.
Anton: Thanks, dude! Hope you can make it to the next party. You’d write the funniest post about it.
I really enjoyed the party. Hoping to be of help to PICS. More power to you!
Glad you enjoyed, Noemi! Thanks for the pretty pictures, and thanks for joining PICS!
[...] survive. I know many, many online services that thrive in markets outside the US. Meanwhile, since I’m outside the US, I still enjoy perfectly legal torrent search through TorrentSpy. You Americans should join your [...]
Congratulations again!
And wow, that has to be one of the most unflattering photos of me ever. o_O
Actually, it’s kinda cute in a quirky way. Thanks for coming, Lauren!
is it free to join? :~)
Annual membership fee’s a nominal P500 (~$11).
[...] After speaking before the Philippine Internet Commerce Society, Philippine Senator Loren Legarda speaks to The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Erwin Oliva about her bill to create the Department of Information and Communications Technology. [...]
Congratulations Mike for another year in PICS. I’m very proud of you and hoping for more success to come your way. Cheers!
Thanks, Janette! I learned from the best.
Hi Mike,
Could you talk to your friend Loren and make some sense out of her? I could go to jail for her stunt priming herself in the next election.
Being a PICS official, you should make a stand against this and her move to police the internet. This is censorship at its best.
Mark, I am against any form of online government censorship. Having a strong background in dealing with the institutional filters of offline media, Senator Legarda is still new to the individual filters of online media.
Senator Legarda is only beginning to understand that, while offline media audiences rely on governments and media outlets for filters, online media audiences have infinite filtering capabilities at their individual disposal. While offline media is pre-filtered, online media is post-filtered. Chief among these post-filtering tools are search engines like Google, and Googler Aileen Apolo works very hard to educate Filipinos on how to empower themselves with these tools.
Post-filtering tools aren’t limited to search engines. Search whittles the Internet down to what you want to see when you want to see it, while content filtering software whittles the Internet down to what you want your kids to see when you want them to see it. Computer-owning parents can install free filtering software on their home networks. Internet cafes can voluntarily install such filtering and advertise themselves as family-friendly, so parents without computers can bring their kids there for homework. Cellular phone service providers can include such filtering in wireless Internet services on their kid-friendly brands. Game publisher Level Up already lets parents control their kids’ gaming time. The infinite choice of the Internet extends to infinite choice in filtering the Internet. The same can’t be said for noontime shows and highway billboards.
While media education is not very effective for offline media, it is incredibly effective for online media, simply because online media viewers have post-filtering tools offline media viewers do not. I’ll make sure to remind Senator Legarda of that fact next time I see her.
[...] outside the US, blogging with a company outside the US, and directing an industry association outside the US, I’ve been seeing more and more Web 2.0 startups popping up even on far-flung tropical [...]