The Information Age

        Also known as the Computer Age, or Computer Era, the Information Age is the present stage of the different eras of world history and human development that began with the Ice Age. The present era is an outflow of the contemporary Space Age that was preceded by the Jet Age, the historical period starting in the middle 70s when turbo-jet planes were introduced to mankind by way of the Super-Sonic Transport (SST).

In the present state, cybernetics and the internet have made information available anywhere from the four corners of the globe. As this essay is written, information and data continue pouring in millions by a minute. Decisions of world leaders and policy makers contribute to the bulk of knowledge shared in the web. Statistics from the stock market and foreign exchange could prove an unending challenge to businessmen and global investors. News comes from all over the world—floods in Thailand, a potentially explosive device found in England, a new song from Lady Gaga, Clint Eastwood’s last movie, a new Chanel show, the latest top-selling local liquor, a new friend in Facebook, plastic-eating bacteria off the coast off Mogadishu, a destructive virus in the internet, etc.

Information grows in every aspect of the arts and sciences. The reading ability of man and his capacity to take in information and his capability with which he can handle all the information have become a daunting challenge of “catch-me-if-you-can.” We elude this discomfort by reading only those data and information that we think we need, mostly those that are in the news, lest we be spending the rest of our lives reading everything that there is to read.

        Photos and pictures, movies and trailers also add to the information overload. Accessing your Google account is not an easy as it may seem. Often we are lost in the morass of notifications, advertisements and sexy lingerie before we can begin to do what we primarily intended to be doing in the computer. Then there are pop-ups, like when your Messenger tells you your brother or kin or friend is on the line. Be discreet with “How are you?” It could mean forever.

Scientific and practical research is a continuing process in the internet. Often we have to fill out lengthy questionnaires out of humanitarian considerations and personal belief that we could be of help in the continuing development of some products and or services in the world market. We may not notice it, but news of successful laboratory experiments come exploding in the web like a bang of the atom collider. The failed ones of course end up in a hushed whimper.

The world knows when its leaders are leading its populations astray, and despite the information that we could scoop free from the internet.com, common sense in making humanitarian decisions remain a big challenge. Countries like China, for instance, do not want to open a wider gate for competition in the world market. Fomenting wars remains to be the pastime of Pentagon. While fashion trends keep on going and coming back better, as history really repeats itself, the Ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana remain to be the bugging problems of sane societies of the world. Hijacking and kidnapping are some of the easiest avenues towards gold and riches. Out of this information maze we often realize that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a blog to be read, unless, perhaps, if you pass it around with flowers.

Winged Beauty

      Has anybody seen anything like this? Please try to help me. I haven't identified this animal which I think is a moth if not a butterfly-- a regular nocturnal visitor of forget-me-not flowers in our garden. That has been so until tonight, when one of our cats, Goldie, caught the buzzer and held it in its mouth and played with it for quite a time until it got tired with the insect. Luckily, Goldie released it but was guarding it, waiting for the winged beauty to take flight and catch it again. I took the rare opportunity and picked the poor thing up from the well-lighted doorway. It was still alive but was barely surviving. It sustained a torn left wing, but excepting that it was almost intact. Before I released it back to the wild, I held it to my mobile phone camera and took these shots, and there I have it forever. 

      I have been trying, surfing the web and hoping to find a similar-looking photo of it for its common and scientific names, but I just couldn't identify the  creature that has proboscis-like tongue about three to four inches long, perhaps it hasn't been cataloged  yet in the list of members of Zoology. I hope somebody could help me.

MY TWO LONG-TAILED NINJAS

       These are two of my three cats. They are at their best when you least expect them. As you may see, they are up there in the narra tree that I have potted for bonsai purposes but which has outgrown its pot and now serves as the hanging playground of these two long-tailed Ninjas. I was just sitting there, under that tree, when out of the blue these playful "toys" just raced up trying to dislodge each other for a better perspective of what they might hope to see around. But I saw the better of them and took a shot out of my mobile phone camera-- a 2.0-megapixel Nokia 5130 that I have with me all the time just in case something like this happens--- which provides for my instant access to the picturesque world that often passes ephemerally. Now I have captured my loved companions at home and they will be with me forever.

PHILIPPINE URBANIZATION

         Let me begin with a definition. Urbanization is the migration or natural influx of a segment of population from rural areas to urban centers. Simply put, urbanization is urban migration. In the wake of this migration is the vast area of arable lands in the countryside that remain idle and uncultivated, such as the one that we have in our picture. 

       In the Philippines, this migration pattern has been going on for the past four centuries. Rural populations migrate to urban areas primarily in search of better economic opportunities. In this sense that migration is seen as an endowed human and natural tendency.

     In the year 2010, more than 60 percent of the total population live in urban centers around the country-- a burgeoning population that is constantly growing with urbanization, increasing urban poverty, burdening problems along urban health and sanitation, and, on top of these, worsening economic inequity. Urban management and ecological systems as well the institutions that are primarily responsible are almost incapable to answer for the unabated growth in urban population that has already exerted environmental, economic and political pressure on governance. Present concerns related to urbanization include but are not limited to the following: better education, improved health and sanitation, higher income levels, housing and transportation, environmental pollution, and social and economic infrastructure requirements.

      The Philippines has more than 1,608 towns and cities with a significant number of conversion of municipalities into cities. In the year 2000, 16 new cities were created and 15 more were converted in the first half of 2001, bringing the total number of cities to 115. Just this year, more cities were proposed to be created. By the year 2020, it is estimated that the country will have more or less 600 cities and urban centers. This natural tendency is best illustrated in the virtual farms of Farmville, just in case you have the opportunity to visit.

 Urbanization of rural and agrarian sectors entail a lot of issues to be resolved, topmost of which is mitigating the costs of urbanization via good urban governance. In the light of urban trend and projections, the following current issues have become very important: poverty reduction, a wider people participation in urban governance, a more rigid line-item budget for development projects (no Congressional lump sums in the form of Priority Development Assistance Funds or "pork barrels"), stronger relationships between public-private sector partnerships, economic development-centered legislation, and an ethics-based judicial system.

One issue that we often sidestep is the intensity of rural-urban relations. For instance, the conversion of agricultural land into industrial, residential and commercial uses underly political processes that reflect particular developmental priorities and political power relations that quite often tend to circumvent bureaucratic regulations at three separate but intertwined levels: policy formulation, local implementation and regulation, and personal relations in rural areas.  Policy formulation, for instance, is easier than having those policies implemented down to the grassroots level.

On September 10, 1971, former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos signed Republic  Act 6389, otherwise known as the Code of Agrarain Reform of the Philippines, thereby turning the entire Philippine archipelago into a land reform area. The ramifications of this Act were overwhelming and sweeping and raised questions about its efficacy relative to objectives and implementation. Even so, the agrarian reform is yet to be finished with no clear accomplishments so far with its infirmities still affluent. 

A classic illustration is the 220-hectare Hacienda Tinang in Concepcion, Tarlac. The hacienda which was once owned by Benigno Aquino, Sr. was sold to the wealthy De Leon family of Pampanga. The De Leon heirs circumvented land reform by faking a voluntary offer of sale under which the land, in parcels, was sold to "farmer-beneficiaries" who were actually members of the De Leon clan composed of the country's wealthiest bankers and businessmen who were able to protect their landed interests.

I cite this case to relate it to the fact that a truthful and determined agrarian reform program is a sure fire avenue towards encouraging agricultural farmers to produce, which is the basic solution to the unrelenting urbanization of the Philippine islands. Where presently we are importing most of our rice from Vietnam, the country might as well dip its fingers deeper into rice and agricultural production by way of agrarian reform.  As of September 2010, the Philippines remains Vietnam's largest rice importer which accounts for nearly 41% of the country's total export value. 

If the Philippine government can turn the trend from labor-exportation to domestic employment and change import-dependency to local agricultural production and industrial  manufacturing, the country can begin to have a glimpse of economic development in the horizon.

FAIRY FLY

    Would have been that most of us were poets, or would-be poets of sorts, that is, -- but now find ourselves mostly preoccupied with things other than poetry or with things we fain somehow attribute to be matters concerning identifiable with the nuances of poetic rhyme and rhythm. We could have chosen to be licensed engineers, too, or registered nurses, doctors, or somebody else other than who we are presently, because to be a poet is  to be impoverished.

   If we measure wealth in terms of the amount or volume of money that we have, then all of us are poor, except for a negligible number of lucky people who struck it rich in this planet. On the other hand, measuring wealth in terms of wisdom or degree of educational attainment would be preposterous if not absurd, as no wealth is enough to satisfy our greed, and the search for learning and education is an unending process, a task, indeed, that we chose to limit upon reaching the doctorate degree. 


   The fact, then, is that, we are all poor, a fact that most of us feign to accept either because reality could smack us right in the face, or we have that bank deposit, or that steady flow of cash into our business account which could burst like a bubble and vanish into thin air at any time without a prior's notice, and this fear jump starts us to begin struggling to be wealthier in terms of more money or in terms of earning  a much superior certificate of   Level of Enlightenment. 

   We think that if we have wealth we can achieve a higher level of education, or that if we are well educated we are guaranteed to be wealthy, and vice-versa. In fact, we may have already equated these two concepts as mutually symbiotic. Conversely, we cannot be rich if we are poorly educated, and we cannot be richly educated if we are financially poor-- facts that characterize the economic demography of the Third World in a circular cumulative causation, but which, of course, admit a lot of exceptions.

   The idiosyncrasy and syndrome of a society that have developed this wealth-wisdom psychology has become apparent in the psycho-social order of things almost anywhere and in most civilizations of the rest of the world. Spiritual enrichment and bureaucratic honesty seem not to suffice for anybody, and most of us give anything up to the extent that nobody in his right mind would ever ambition to be a mere janitor, cobbler, barmaid, or a handyman-- except when you are dead-right-down- there in the gutter. 


   A good number of us profoundly think we must act fast before time catches up with us, life is ephemeral as a fairy fly and only a very few of us have understood that we have been endowed wise and rich, and that human fulfillment finds itself in the  unlimited sharing of this wisdom and wealth that a few of us possess.


   Yes, indeed, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.