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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
Recently a tourism official claimed that a mobile saved his life. A bystander took pictures on his mobile while the official was being menaced by kidnappers — seeing this, they fled. Another triumph for the mobile.
This paper examines some of the claims about the transformative consequences of new communicative media, especially as they apply to the Philippines. Modern technologies were introduced into the country soon after their discovery abroad but despite their transformative potential there was very little change in the basic structures of society. Why was this so? The transformative capacity of technology has been the driving force for social change in modern times. Why has the Philippines remained a conservative society unable to harness the potentials of technology despite its rapid introduction into the country? Are there cultural reasons for this social conservatism? Will the mobile revolution finally transform the Philippines into a technologically driven economy and society?
TRANSFORMATIVE CAPACITIES OF TECHNOLOGY
Despite having many features commonly associated with Western modernity, such as a vigorous democracy, an accessible education system, a relatively free media and an obsession with Western pop culture, the Philippines is not known for its technological development. The lack of resources is often blamed for the failure of the Philippine state to support science and technology but the opposite view is just as valid. The country's lack of resources is also due to its inability to harness the gains of technology for economic development. When the local legislature took over funding from the American colonial authorities in 1933, one of its first decisions was to drastically cut funds for the Bureau of Science, until then well known for its original research on tropical medicine and agriculture (Caoili 1991). Much of the technology for the Green Revolution was actually developed at the foreign-funded International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos. However, the country still imports much of its rice needs and remains one of the least efficient agricultural economies in the region. There appears to be deep cultural reasons for this failure to adapt science and technology for the country's improvement.
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